All right. Welcome, everybody, to VNV Global's conference call for the second quarter 2023. Per Brilioth, VNV Global CEO, will kick us off by going through noteworthy developments during the quarter. After Per's section, I'll run through the main NAV drivers and movements for the quarter. Before we finish the call with a Q&A, we will also do a more general deep dive into VNV Global's approach to valuation of unlisted investments, and look at the top names of the portfolio in aggregate in a bit more detail from a valuation perspective as per June 30th. As always, if you have any questions, please type them in through Zoom's chat function or Q&A function, and we will address them towards the end of the call.
With that, I'll leave the floor to CEO, Per Brilioth. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Björn, welcome everyone from me, too. Dennis is running the slides. This will kick us off, still pretty much the same portfolio. We'll come back to a lot of details around how this NAV stacks up, et cetera. If you sort of take this point of the NAV and compare it to start of 2012, the annual IRR is 17.5%. That's the update on this page.
Go to the next page, Dennis Mohammad. The NAV, as of the end of June, now is $725 million. That works out, we're listed in Swedish crowns, so I tend to look at the SEK number, just under SEK 60 per share in NAV.
The actual NAV is up a little bit during the quarter because we did this financing, the rights issue, to fund the acquisition of shares in BlaBlaCar. If you take it on a per share basis, it's down. The fact that we issued some stock below NAV in the rights issue is, of course, a drag on the NAV per share, there are other things that sort of make up this. We bought BlaBlaCar shares at a very attractive price, there's been a slight uplift in that. That's helpful. There's two sort of main drags, we'll come back to a lot of more detail on this.
Get this down, and of course, Babylon essentially went to zero as we sort of or I elaborate a lot on, and also lessons from that in my intro to the quarterly report. As usual, if you go one page ahead, Dennis, you know, this last sort of green bar is the SEK 60 per share, which is roughly the same as where we ended in March, at least on this big picture. We still trade at SEK 20 or around SEK 20 , so that's a, you know, just under 70% discount. I think it's 67%, yeah, 67% discount, which is large.
I mean, yeah, if we elaborate on why that is, of course, sentiment around, you know, the sector we're in, which is tech companies, which are typically sort of young and typically sort of got a few years down the road to becoming cash flow positive. You know, from at least that's the picture you get from a distance, that the market in general has at this space. That we can't do much about, but what we can do something about, is to make sure that everything around sort of VNV and our portfolio and at the VNV sort of level, that we turn cash outflows into cash inflows.
Part of the work we're doing is that we're making sure that our portfolio companies are turning around to becoming profitable. As we point out in the report, and as we will provide you with a lot more detail on, is that's going in the right direction. Cutting costs and focusing more on profitability, et cetera, has had, you know, has resulted in that a larger part of our portfolio is EBITDA-positive now than it was a quarter ago, and that will continue to in that direction. I think the actual figure is that now we have 53% of the portfolio as EBITDA-positive.
If you include Voi, which is also EBITDA-positive now, it's at 66%, but Voi also owns these scooters, so you got to look at the EBIT, and it's not quite there yet on EBIT. That, but that's all up since last quarter, and I endeavor to say that that will continue. As you keep on doing that, then eventually it actually becomes cash inflows to not only the companies, but then also to the shareholders.
The other big thing, of course, is the cash inflow versus outflow at the VNV level, and that gets us to sort of what I dare say, sort of priority number one, highest on the to-do list at this desk and at my colleague's desk, is to make sure . It's related to the debt that we have outstanding, which, as you know, is two bonds, one maturing in pretty much exactly a year's time, or so summer of 2024, and then the final part matures in the early part of 2025. As you will sort of remember, and I think we've talked about a lot, our financial strategy is not to have any debt.
We allow ourselves some debt when we have a clear path to an exit in the portfolio, so we see it more as a bridge than something that we don't have debt to sort of juice up the return profile of our portfolio with leverage. That's not the way we look at it. We put on this debt in order to have to sort of bridge to an exit. W e do have exits in the portfolio, and we are working on those. Despite most of what you may think, that, like how is it possible to sell something in when the market is volatile? Well, it's not done until it's done, but I feel confident that we will sort of retire this debt with proceeds from exits in the portfolio.
Making sure that our portfolio companies are becoming profitable, and that work is showing good results. Making sure that we sell some stuff in the portfolio, capitalize on those exits, and retire the debt with those proceeds. Before I let in my colleagues, I just want to touch a little bit upon the portfolio. If you go to the next page.
The actual structure of the portfolio is pretty similar to what you have been used to, but just touching upon, you know, a couple of these names, and what's been going on during the course of this quarter. Of course, BlaBlaCar, the big thing with BlaBlaCar is our activity in the name. We talked about this in the last quarter report because that came, you know, came out around about the time that when we're doing this. Our stake in the company has gone up to just under 14%, a little bit above 40% if you exclude sort of some of the employee options that they have, and a little bit under 40% on a fully diluted basis, but we'll see if those options get exercised or not.
We're very bullish on the company, we think that, you know, this is probably the right figure to think about because we think the value of the company will be going up over the coming years. I'd like to think that this figure is the one, the right one. Other than that, I think, the company's doing well. I mean, we cover it in the report. You will have seen that this year, we see them delivering a record EUR 250 million in revenues, so strong. They, during last year, as you know, I think we've touched upon many times before, they doubled revenues, and they doubled gross profit. They're EBITDA-positive this year as a full year.
T he company as such is performing very well, and we're very happy to have been able to purchase these shares at what we think is a very attractive price. We see the company from the mark we have it on now to delivering our sort of targeted returns going forward.
And doing that at a very low risk profile, given that they are profitable and that they have a large net cash on the balance sheet, that it is a very established company, and that it's like a broken record I'm talking about, that this is the business model in our portfolio that's the most reminiscent of, you know, classifieds and where we already see patches of the company delivering upon classified type of margins. Very strong indeed. And on Voi, so here we're, I mean, super enthusiastic, as we should, I was gonna say, but I mean, the company is really, really delivering now. It's this is the first EBITDA- positive quarter.
You're looking at this company won't get to sort of the 60% of classifieds, sort of best-in-class classifieds EBITDA margins, but it's, you know, like we've said before, it should be able to get to half that, and we're seeing sort of, you know, some markets doing that this year. That gets you to a place where, you know, you also get very close to these sort of earnings lines that actually matters here, which is EBIT, s o very strong indeed. We're super excited that having lost London, when London issued its first sort of licenses to do scooters, they actually beat TIER to it and took a license this time around.
London is also now, those of you who've done scooters or traveled on scooters in London will know that it's been a patchy start in general to sort of scooter life in that city, but now its larger parts of the city is covered. You can travel, and you can park in larger parts of the city. There's a larger amount of scooters also that will be present there. It's very, very positive for Voi, and especially positive for Voi since they're present. They're so large and present in so many other cities in the U.K. Really becoming sort of something that maybe is well described as the national carrier there.
They're also, they've also been successful in other parts of Europe, here up in the north, but also winning Vienna is a big win. You will notice that this sort of rhymes very badly, you know, this very upbeat sort of message. You'll ask yourself, why the heck have they marked Voi down a little bit during this quarter? W hen we value Voi, since , well, it's starting to become profitable or it hasn't been profitable, we're using a sales multiple. The focus of the company is very much on profitability to sort of extend the runway of the cash they have and to become cash flow positive.
That, as in all companies, sort of lowers the sales growth a little bit in order to sort of to capture profitability quicker. The company is just seeing ample amount of demand from customers to travel on their scooters. We revised down, maybe being too conservative, we revised down the revenue figures over the course of 2023 in our model to reflect that the company is going for profitability, which means a little bit tighter on the supply. That's the background on that. I hope that makes sense for you. We are very enthusiastic and very and especially happy that they won a mega city like London for the first time.
Actually, as you know, they're the biggest in Europe in terms of licenses across this continent. London is clearly the biggest city that they have scored so far. Otherwise, Gett is doing well. We've written that down a little bit. That's a reflection of that there's been some political uncertainty in Israel as a market, and of course, as you know, Israel is a very important market for Gett. It's not really a reflection of the business doing worse. This political uncertainty has not affected the business, but more from a risk premium, sort of cost of capital kind of aspect. We thought that was the right thing to do.
But the company as such is doing well, and although we sort of refer to it in a more loose way here in my sort of write up on Gett, but for those of you who Google ride hailing in Israel, you will note that what I'm referring to is that Uber has decided to withdraw from Israel. And although Uber , you know, wasn't so big, it's still Uber. So, I think that's a big positive for the company.
One company I'd like to highlight now, and that I think will become an increasingly important part of our portfolio, but it's but it's really been in the shadows of all these others, BlaBlaCar, Voi, Gett, et cetera, is Housing Anywhere. HousingAnywhere, by the way, will present at our Capital Markets Day on the 19th of September. For those of you who can't make it to Paris, we're hosting the day at the BlaBlaCar office in Paris. For those of you who can make it there, then we're, you know, we'll as usual, live stream that so you can participate. HousingAnywhere will be presenting.
I really sort of would like to highlight that one as this is one to look out for. You remember, just a few words on HousingAnywhere. This is a true marketplace, so really, you know, marketplaces, you know, capture these kind of network effects that we look for and that ultimately have a potential to render sort of very high barriers to entry. This is a true marketplace. It's an Airbnb for medium-term rentals, and that market is really starting to pick up. This is very intuitive because you see more and more people. You can work from anywhere now.
Like someone said, it was Björn or one of our colleagues here who said that an increasing amount of their sort of friends who sort of get their first kid and et cetera, they use the opportunity to go and work from an external sort of office, and then work from a different country for six months or something. That's exactly what HousingAnywhere offers. This is an Airbnb for medium-term rentals in other countries. This market is really picking up. In addition to that, this is really becoming like a private equity story because it's an M&A roll-up kind of story. It's acquiring its competitors across Europe.
In fact, it the most recent acquisition was its largest competitor in Europe, which is a French company. It'll also be, you know, very relevant for them to present in France, because France is becoming a bigger, quite a large part of their business. But so both growing organically because this market is really picking up, but also growing by the way of M&A. Just to give you a sense, this company is now like a $30 million-$35 million revenue for 2023. Not quite profitable yet, but not far away. Could be profitable if they slow down a little bit, but they've opted not to.
You know, just, you know, the back of the envelope calculation here is that I really feel that this $30 million-$35 million revenue will be able to grow to $100 million, 3x, not over next year, but over the coming sort of three, four or five years. Both organically, but also from sort of M&A as they acquire smaller competitors across Europe. So getting to a $100 million revenue base and then also using Airbnb as the relevant multiple, this is a billion-dollar company. A billion-dollar company, well, 30%, that's our entire market cap from a company that's completely in the shadows we never talk about.
I think this is a good highlight to sort of that there's a lot of stuff going on in the portfolio that I think will become much more important over the coming years. HousingAnywhere, I think, is one to sort of pre-market ahead of our upcoming Capital Markets Day in September. There's bits and pieces going on in the portfolio. We obviously wrote down Babylon. They're delisting. W ell, the owners of the debts will be the owners of the company. It's a tragic outcome of that. I wanted to do like a Full Monty sort of postmortem of that in my management report. I have done.
The lessons that are very important to learn and that we will bring with us as we continue doing our work. That's obviously something that I don't wanna hide from, that it's a big negative and a big scar, but it's very painful. Now we turn the page on that and move on. I wanted to take a sort of one last sort of big outing on that company, and we have done that in this report. Then there's small bits and pieces going on. We're continuously monitoring for new investments, but very selectively, because priority number one is, of course, to pay down the debts, but w e have funded a few new companies that's really come out of our scout network.
NoTraffic is an Israeli company, which we're very excited about, which Fairx out its own 5%. They did a big round, and we took our pro rata on that. or roughly our pro rata. NoTraffic will also be presenting at the Capital Markets Day. That I'd encourage you to listen in or visit or listen to them when they present.
We also did another small round in another one of our scout companies, which did their next round, seed round, actually, in a very exciting space within hair coloring. It's a platform. It's basically an AI platform for hair coloring, and we can go into more details around that. We're very excited about that space. It's a very profitable area in that industry. This company is essentially disrupting how that whole industry works. I want to look out for.
If we turn the page, we've also, before we go into the details of the portfolio, we've also sort of had a stab of presenting our portfolio in a slightly different way. This sort of green part of, you know, you'll see the companies, they're our core portfolio, our mature assets. They're profitable or either very close to profitability. We have two. We've sort of sliced and diced our portfolio into geography. Another 9%, which is this dark green, is smaller companies with network effects potential in developed markets, mainly Europe. Given our emerging markets background, we also have sort of made a small pie ce of the pie in putting all our emerging markets portfolio companies into that piece.
See, you could see those two areas as early stage work, where we sort of, you know, find our new sort of BlaBlas and new Avitos. P art of that work is European focus, which is one sort of set of experiences and personnel that looks at that. And then we have another bucket of experiences that has us, you know, receiving a lot of deal flow from the same kind of companies, network effects, potential companies, but more focused in emerging markets. Those two pieces of the pie are about the same size. And then we got some LP investments, and then we got cash.
I think with that, I'll hand over to Björn to dig us a little bit deeper into the details of this report.
Thank you, Per. If we move to the next slide, Dennis. Thank you. I'll walk through the NAV in a bit more detail before handing over to Dennis and the general valuation detail, which I described previously. NAV per share as per June 30th, came in at $5.54 per share, which is $725 million. Total NAV down roughly 9% over the quarter. In SEK, we ended the quarter at SEK 59.84, down roughly 5% over the quarter due to some favorable FX. Total investment portfolio stood at $888 million, of which $58 million was cash. If you also include liquidity management investments, cash and cash equivalents, that's $64 million as of June 30th.
Again, share price closed at around 20, big discount to NAV. If we move to the next slide, Dennis, I'll walk through some of the main holdings. The largest holding, BlaBlaCar, continues to be valued on the basis of an EV/ sales multiples model, and was revalued to $276 million, up 18% during the quarter. This revaluation was primarily driven by the secondary transaction, where we acquired secondary BlaBlaCar shares at a steep discount to fair value. The BlaBlaCar position represents roughly SEK 22.8 per share as per June 30th, becoming a larger portion of the overall NAV.
Gett, as Per mentioned, is valued on the EV/EBITDA multiples model and marked down during the quarter, 18% or roughly $20 million, primarily driven by decreased ownership, following some additional dilution, and an increased discount adjustment due to macro-related risks. Voi, which also Per mentioned briefly, is valued on the EV/Sales model and was also marked down some 8% during the quarter, driven by an updated peer group multiples and other input variables. Babylon, which Per mentioned, represented the second largest negative fair value change of some $18 million during the quarter. The remainder of the portfolio, so smaller changes in general, primarily driven by the fluctuating multiples and the market during the quarter. Total investments amounted to some $31 million.
Vast majority, of course, was related to the EUR 25 million investment into BlaBlaCar. That was funded by the rights issue of SEK 328 million at SEK 20 per share that closed in May. Finally, if we move to the next slide, Dennis, we see the difference in the portfolio since the first quarter, and also note that the debt we have on balance sheet decreased by some 4% following favorable FX and the weak Swedish crown.
With that, I'll hand over to Dennis, who will walk you through a general deep dive of our approach to valuation of unlisted investments, and also look at the top names in the portfolio in aggregate, to get a better portfolio perspective as per June 30th. Go ahead, Dennis.
Many thanks, Björn. As Björn mentioned, my name is Dennis Mohammad. I'm an Investment Manager on the team. I will run you through this general valuation deep dive. The purpose of this valuation session is to give a bit more detail and transparency into how we value our investment portfolio at VNV. The content in this part of the presentation is not directly related to the Q2 2023 report. However, some of the multiple data that I will show are from this last published report. As you know, the net asset value comprises of the value of the VNV Global investment portfolio, plus cash, less debt. Today we will deep dive into the valuation of the investment portfolio part of this equation.
VNV Global's investments are valued at fair value on the basis of IFRS, and the investments are categorized into three different levels. Level one are listed assets with quoted prices on an active market. Historically, this has been our investments, such as Hemnet, Swvl, or Babylon, who have all been publicly traded, and where the last price per share from quarter end serve as a basis for our valuation. Level two are unlisted assets, where the valuation is based on observable data, typically a recent priced equity transaction at market terms, such as the $50 million Series B round in NoTraffic that was closed in this quarter that Per mentioned, where the transaction price per share serves as the basis for our valuation.
We are allowed to keep an asset on level two for up to 12 months after the close of a transaction before it goes stale. However, if there are a lot of movements in the market, the valuation might go stale earlier, and we then move it to level three . Finally, level three is unlisted assets, where the valuation is based on other input than observable data, and in this case, it's primarily valuation models based on a revenue or EBITDA multiple of comparable peer groups. As you can see on the right-hand side of this slide, the vast majority of VNV Global's investment portfolio for Q2 2023 are valued on level three, and that is value to the model.
This number has changed a lot over the past 18 months as a consequence of the market volatility we have seen, and this is, as you can see, also reflected in the way that we value our portfolio. As a large share of the investment portfolio is valued on level three, I will now walk you through an illustrative example of how we run our model-based valuations at VNV. On the left-hand side of the slide we are projecting, you see an example of the several steps we take to value one portfolio company on level three. However, note that all these numbers are illustrative. We first start off with a sales or profitability metric from the portfolio company. Typically, if it's a profitability metric, it is EBITDA, but it could also be further down the P&L.
This is a number that we receive from the portfolio company budgets or business plans. We typically take a haircut based on our view at VNV, and in this example, I have used $100 as the adjusted sales figure for sake of simplicity. We create a peer group of publicly traded companies that are similar to our portfolio company and take their median, either enterprise value to sales or enterprise value to EBITDA multiple for that group. In this example, that median multiple is 2x sales, and this is the number that you can find in the notes package of our quarterly report for portfolio companies valued on the model. This is a figure that we do share publicly each quarter.
As a third step, we always apply a discount to the median multiple of the peer group. Discount, this discount is to reflect both the fact that our companies are private and therefore more illiquid versus public peers, but also to reflect differences in size, growth, profitability, geographic exposure, et cetera, for our portfolio company versus the public peers. The discount that we apply typically varies between 10% and 30%. It is never below 10%, but it could also be higher than 30%. In this example, the discount applied is 20%. This takes the adjusted median peer group multiple applied in our example from 2 to 1.6 after adjusting for the discount.
If you then multiply the sales figure with the adjusted EV/Sales multiple, so $100 times 1.6, that gets us to the implied enterprise value, $160. As a next step, we look at the portfolio company's net debt figure. That is debt less cash. In this portfolio company example that we illustrate, they have a net cash position illustrated by the -$40, and therefore, when getting to the equity value, we subtract the net debt and reach $200. That is $160 + $40 gets us to a $200 equity value. As a final step, we look at VNV's fully diluted ownership in the portfolio company.
In the fully diluted ownership number, we include any potential dilution impact from management incentive programs or other incentive programs, be it options, warrants, or other potentially dilutive securities. Some of these incentive shares worth highlighting might not even be allocated, and some might not even be in the money. To reflect the full potential dilution impact, we include any shares that are approved and that could be dilutive in the future. We typically own 10%-20% of our portfolio companies, in this example, I've assumed we own 15% on a fully diluted basis. Multiplying our ownership, the 15%, with the equity value, gets us to VNV's the value of VNV's stake, and that is the number that you would find in our NAV report for any given portfolio company valued on level three.
As you know, we do not disclose which peer groups we use to value our portfolio companies, with in our models. However, on the right-hand side of this slide, we are able to show you the peer group that we used to value one of our former portfolio companies, namely Property Finder. Property Finder, which you can probably derive from the peer group, is a leading real estate classifieds player in the UAE. As a reminder, VNV sold its position in Property Finder during Q3 of 2022 for a cash consideration of roughly $39 million, which was the valuation that our level three model had reached in the Q2 2022 valuation of Property Finder. Since this is an exited portfolio company, we can show you the peer group that we used.
Moving on to the next slide, in an attempt to share a little bit more detail of how our portfolio companies perform and are valued versus peers, we have aggregated the top 10 individual holdings that are listed on the right and divided them into one of three categories, depending on the competitive dynamics in the industry where they are active and on the margin profile for their business. Category A are portfolio companies in markets with winner-takes-all type dynamics and with long-run gross margin profiles in the +70% territory. An example here would be BlaBlaCar. Category B are portfolio companies in markets with winner-takes-most type dynamics and with long-run gross margin profiles in the 50%-70% territory. An example here would be Gett.
Category C are portfolio companies in markets with more competitive dynamics, however, where regional winners tend to prevail, and with long-run gross margin profiles in the 20%-50% territory, and an example here would be Wasoko. On this slide, we are on the left-hand side, showing how each category of VNV portfolio companies are expected to grow during 2023, and the range of EV/Sales multiples applied in the VNV Q2 report for these companies. We also show on the right-hand side of the slide, the average expected growth with a public peer group we use to value each category of portfolio companies and the range of EV/Sales multiples that these companies traded on at quarter close Q2 2023 for the 30th of June.
As you can see for Category A, as an example, the VNV portfolio companies are growing twice as fast, so 30% versus the 15% figure for the public peer group, but are valued at 5.4x-8.1x sales, versus the peer group that is trading at 7.7x-9x sales. That same relationship hold for all these categories. We think this is a good way to illustrate the point that we do like to err on the conservative side when valuing our portfolio companies, especially on a model. To give you a sense of the size and growth of the top 10 portfolio company revenues, this slide shows VNV Global's pro rata share of the top 10 portfolio company revenues from 2020 until 2023.
That is, as an example, of the expected roughly EUR 250 million in revenue that BlaBlaCar is expected to deliver this year. We have included 13.7%, so that is our fully diluted ownership of that in the 2023 bar, and done the same exercise for all top 10 portfolio companies. As you can see, this is a fast-growing portfolio with roughly 40% CAGR since 2020, and our pro rata share of the top 10 portfolio company revenues is expected to be some $170 million this year. Comparing that to the current market cap of VNV, that would imply that we are trading at a 1.4x sales, when only including the top 10 portfolio company revenues at current market price for VNV Global.
At the final slide, this portfolio is not only growing, but is also, as Per has already alluded to, increasingly reaching profitability. In Q1 2023, some 45% of the investment portfolio was EBITDA-positive, a number that now in Q2 has increased to 53% when excluding Voi. When including Voi, that number is 66%. As D&A is relevant in Voi P&L, EBIT is the most relevant figure to look at for Voi, compared to almost all other VNV portfolio companies, where EBITDA is a good proxy for cash flows. We're happy to see that an increase in share of the portfolio is becoming profitable and therefore less dependent on external capital to continue to grow. I will, with that, stop here and hand it back to Björn to kick us off with some Q&A.
Thank you, Dennis. Yes, we've received some questions already. If you have questions, please, again, type them into the Q&A or chat function here on Zoom. To start off, I see that we have a number of questions relating to the bonds. Per, I'll try to phrase it here. One question is if you can give some color on when you expect to be able to address the bonds? The follow-up, that do you expect it to be one type of transaction, or will you expect to handle the two bonds at different times?
Also, do you need to complete the larger exit to cover the first bond, or do you have resources to do so with current cash?
Very good questions. Thank you for those. The numbers stack up like this. We got, like, $60 million of cash. We call it there's, like, $10 million or so that we're looking to use that cash to fund other investment opportunity or, like, to fund stuff in our portfolio. Y ou know, what's the expression? We're not gonna fund everything, but there's some stuff that we will fund. That's about 10. That leaves 50. Of course, got running costs, et cetera. The point I'm trying to make is that the first bond we could nearly cover with sort of the liquidity that we have within the portfolio.
The first bond is due, it's a smaller one, which is SEK 500 million, we'll call it, well, you know, $45 million or so. That one is covered by that. In order to sort of to pay down the larger bond, which is SEK 1.2 billion, which is then, well, the remainder, say, call it $110 million-$150 million. I've rough and ready, just converting Swedish crowns into dollars. To pay that down, we don't have enough cash for currently, so we need to complete some exits in the portfolio.
As I sort of alluded to earlier, y ou know, that's a very high priority, and, I think, if I would sort of stick my neck out and say, do I think we'll be able to do that? Yes, I think we'll be able to sort of sell stuff in the portfolio in order to sort of pay down that sort of larger bond that matures in early 2025. Both of those bonds, they run at 5% in Swedish crowns fixed rate. Given where , you know, the rates are currently, it's the carrying cost is very low. If we sell stuff this autumn, we may just, it will be plus/ minus zero.
You know, without taking a lot of risk, you probably get, like, 5% on if you place liquidity into sort of return, low-risk return investments. Of course, we'll, as we approach maturity of those bonds, the call penalty, the to pay back early sort of penalty for that, gets reduced a lot, so we might deal them ahead of time. First bond got liquidity, rough and ready in the portfolio. Second bond, we need to sell some stuff, I think we'll be able to do that.
That's sort of, you know, the general, my view on how, you know, I think it's a fair description of how we see our work being cut out versus that indebtedness and , well, these two bonds over the coming year and a half. Björn, did I cover the questions you brought up there?
I believe so. Another question here relates to what we expect to invest in existing portfolio. I think it relates to the previous mentioned $50 million expectation that required for our part of the existing portfolio. Maybe if you can provide some color, if that number still holds true or where we are in relation to that.
Yeah, yeah. It's like $10 million-$50 million , I think, is the number that we've used before. I wonder if it will be as much as $15 million. $10 million-$15 million, I think, is a fair description of that. As these companies turn profitable, means that the cash flow or the funding need gets reduced. Of course, as they turn profitable, the ability to fund themselves at sort of fair value, it gets much better. Which means that we can also opt out and get diluted at a fair value.
There's some stuff in the portfolio , but which is really small. It's like a percent or if that, where we may not be able to sort of support or want to sort of fund the companies, and then they will get diluted. In all these big ones, they're either profitable and have the cash to get to cash flow positive or are getting to a space where they will be able to fund themselves from third-party people at sort of acceptable dilution metrics. So 10-15, I think is still relevant. Maybe, yeah.
Thank you. Another, I guess, question related to that. There's a question here in, like, longer-term strategy. Do you want to maintain a portfolio with its, you know, large amount of companies, roughly 70 to 80, if I'm not mistaken? Are you looking to have fewer but more concentrated investments going forward? You just did two smaller investments that you highlighted in this report, which points to, I guess, maintaining a larger portfolio. Maybe some color on our thinking there.
Yeah, no, our sort of culture or strategy is to run a concentrated portfolio. I very much adhere to or at least historically, you know, those who've followed us for some time know that we've not sort of had diversification as a core point in our strategy. J ust i f it has made sense to sort of continue funding a company, even if that's rendered the portfolio being , sort of, very concentrated, then we've let that company sort of run. If it's become a very large part of portfolio, we've let that happen. It's been very opportunistically driven like that.
I do see the benefits of having a few large names. You know, back in 2018, we would have 60% in one name. And that was because that company did super well, and it was a super good exit and all fine. It becomes, you know, our company becomes very associated with one name only. I think it's probably better in the way we have it now, that there's maybe five, six names that make up a large chunk of the portfolio, so diversified in that sense. But, you know, 70 names or so, i s probably as high as it will get in terms of number of names. That will go down from now on, as you'll see our investment activities slow down a lot.
We fund, you know, the odd ones already existing in the portfolio, but the number of names will be reduced. S ort of, more concentration across a few big names is what I think you should expect out of this portfolio going forward.
Good. A short question on buybacks, yeah. Why don't we buy back shares given the big discount to NAV? I can do a short answer on this one.
Unfortunately, we are restricted because of the bonds at the moment. Hence, we're unable to buy back shares even if we wanted to. That's the short answer on that.
There's another question, i f there are any way to provide more guidance or color around the growth, profitability, outlook for BlaBlaCar and the larger constituents of the portfolio and be more granular in KPIs that we can provide going forward.
That's the question?
Yeah.
That's the ask. Yeah, right. I mean, we will certainly endeavor to get you as much transparency as we can from our portfolio companies, but it's not quite , you know, that easy. We're a large shareholder in all these companies, but we can't sort of dictate what the companies will share with the sort of a more public world. So, we're restricted on what we can share. BlaBlaCar, for example, is, you know, looking backwards, it's obviously doubled revenue and profitability during the course of 2022 or gross margin and that growth sort of now slows down, but it remains very high on the revenue side of things.
B ut profitability will grow much faster than revenue, essentially. I think doesn't give, it's a very anorectic sort of answer in terms of someone who quests for more detail around that and wants to run their own model. What I will say, though, if you Google it, you'll see that BlaBlaCar is much more active recently in the press, and there, you know, there's some fairly current, fresh interviews with BlaBlaCar management and where they give a little bit more detail.
One of those details is that they refer to an IPO, and that they are ready for that in 2024, should conditions be right, or if that extends to 2025, is the way that I think they describe it. You'll find these if you Google them. Y ou know, a company like that, which has become mature, profitable, and which is sort of getting ready for an IPO, that often goes hand in hand in them being sort of, more at ease to share more information, about their current trading and outlook, et cetera.
I think in the case of BlaBlaCar, we may expect them to start to allow us or to share more information than or the market in general. They will provide the market with more information. That'll be interesting to follow. Voi is not really there yet. I know there's a lot of talk about them going public here in Stockholm a year or so ago, but they opted to fund themselves in private market instead. That market needs to consolidate a little bit, and then when that consolidation is over, I think there will be more companies going public. There's been talk about Lime going public, the U.S. competitor, which will be interesting to see.
The kind of level of financial detail from Voi that you can expect, at least in the short term, is sort of the level that you get from us right now. Yeah, I hope that sort of gave some color to the question.
Good. Maybe a final question on BlaBlaCar here that just came in. Why is BlaBlaCar not really taking off in some markets, for example, the U.K., Great Britain, or Sweden, for that matter?
Y eah. I mean, it did its big sort of geographical expansion around 2015, where it went from being in a very few markets to 22 markets. Then it sort of stopped the geographical expansion and to focus on becoming deeper and providing deeper liquidity within each of those 22 countries. It never got to Sweden. Sweden being a small market, I don't think it's present in any of the small Scandinavian markets. Will it come here eventually? I'm sure. For now, the focus is to become to build liquidity in each of the current markets .
The first step, well, the first step is to build liquidity, then after building liquidity, you can start to monetize, then you go from there, then you get to profitability as well. Great Britain, so the classical, well, things that have to be present in the market for BlaBlaCar to be successful is that petrol is expensive as a percentage of disposable income. It sort of made sense to get other people in the car to share the cost of a long-distance ride. The other one would be that alternatives, like train, et cetera, would be poor or not present at all.
Well, for those of you living in Great Britain, I don't, you know, petrol seems to be expensive. Certainly, if you come there for the, you know, us lot, living in Sweden with our poor Swedish currency. I would say that trains, et cetera, are present in the U.K. None of those really explain why it's not kicked off in earnest in the U.K. Beyond those two sort of big ones, I guess it's cultural. Do you want to have people in your car that's more like, you know, people in some countries are more likely to be open to that than in other countries, et cetera.
What I can say is that some markets, and probably U.K. included, where it's not hit, you know, it's not growth, it's not grown so dramatically as in other markets like France, Spain, Brazil, now Mexico, is growing very, very fast. Some markets where, you know, it just takes a little longer. If it's not sort of taken off, that probably has meant that the company hasn't, it's withdrawn a little bit, and it's not given so much focus, it's not spent any marketing, et cetera. Those markets have, over time, still become liquid, and by itself, sort of generated liquidity. Mexico is a good example like that, which was a little slow. It was better to do Brazil.
Mexico, over the years, has grown to become quite a liquid market. With liquidity, then things start to happen at a much faster rate. But there's no other sort of clear reason why, for example, the U.K. is not as active in this space, as France, for example. It's probably down to culture, something like that.
Good. All right. Thank you for that. I think we touched upon most of the questions. If we missed anything or if you have additional questions, please reach out over email or give us a call. If anything, I leave it to Per for some closing remarks, if any.
Thanks for listening in. I mean, we got our work cut out for us here. You know, there's some stuff in the portfolio that's ripe for exits over this coming sort of periods, quarter, quarters. We're quite enthusiastic about that. R eally, you know, there's nothing that's wholly in the portfolio. I mean, there's some stuff that's doing super well that we think has very, very long-term, big potential, BlaBlaCar included. BlaBlaCar, of course, you know, if they do an IPO, then, you know, that will provide us with more liquidity.
Really outside of that, we think there's stuff in the portfolio that will help us, that we will be able to exit, and that will help us retire this debt, which I think will be a big driver for us to sort of be able to move out of this historically very high discount that we are associated with right now. Yeah. Anyway, I'll stop blabbering on about that. We talked a lot about that already. Thank you all for listening in, and see you in a quarter.