VNV Global AB (publ) (STO:VNV)
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Earnings Call: Q3 2020

Oct 23, 2020

Per Brilioth
CEO, VNV Global

Thank you, and hi, everyone. I'll quickly flick through some slides as usual, and then I will open up for Q&A. I think you will be familiar with our history, and I will go directly into some points on this quarter. On a per share basis, the NAV is down a little bit on the nine months. If you exclude the rights issue, which was obviously down below NAV, the NAV is about flat over the same period. That's how the math work. Overall, in this last quarter, there was about SEK 45 million of upwards movement in the portfolio. Most of the things in the portfolio are based on a model now. All the NAV is constructed through using valuation models, and we've done this since the start of COVID, and also, of course, an absence of transactions.

The movements in the portfolio have not been so dramatic. The largest holdings are still the largest holdings, Babylon, followed by BlaBla, followed by Gett, followed by Voi. All in all, it's about a SEK 900 million net asset value. This is, of course, now including the cash we raised in the rights issue. That's about SEK 85 per share. Babylon is still enjoying a lot of attention in terms of the overall macro in the sector, both from clients operationally, big focus on the U.S., and a very interesting development that's going on around the company. In this last quarter that ended on September 30th, they did about 11,000 daily consultations, which was up about 35% year-over-year.

The diligent reader here will notice that that's up less than the second quarter, but that's of course, the second quarter was maybe in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and activity was higher. Now in a recovery phase, and we'll see what happens now in Q4 and Q1, of course, that remains to be seen. In the summer recovery phase, it was still up from last year, but up a little less than during that terrible second quarter in terms of health of the planet, so to speak. Anecdotally, I think we've also heard that especially here in Sweden, amongst the telehealth operators, is that in general, this may differ from country to country, I guess, but in general here, it's been a fact that people are, apart from COVID, people have been very healthy.

Hence the activity beyond COVID has been slower than usual. That I guess is a glimpse into just a very short space of time. The bigger picture is, of course, that digital healthcare, primary care, and healthcare overall is going digital. The pandemic that we've been through has accelerated that a lot. BlaBlaCar I think we've spoken about this. BlaBlaCar is, of course, tough patch in the second quarter. Continuing tough patch now as well, especially if you compare it to other mobility plays in our portfolio, like Voi. Clearly people have started moving around in their own cities, and when they move around in their own cities, they don't want to go on the tube or the bus.

They walk, go by car, and e-scooter platforms fit very well into this. We'll come back to that. There's been less sort of the recovery phase has been people have been less prone in the recovery phase to move between cities. I think, in some places it's not been possible to move between cities. You've not been allowed to move, and where you've been allowed to move, people have been trying to stay put. That's the background to the relatively more negative effect of BlaBlaCar versus Voi. However, the people who do move between cities have, in a similar fashion to what we see inside the cities, do not want to go on trains and buses or airplanes. They prefer to go by car. Car hence becomes the only sort of, or the preferred sort of method of transportation in long distance.

That's also viewed, you can see that in BlaBlaCar, where the car side of things has come back in a big way, but the bus side of things is slower. It's very interesting for BlaBlaCar because they, of course, enjoy that sort of recovery phase on the car side of things. That also gives them not only something to operate with currently, but it also gives them a big edge in terms of data, when and how to relaunch buses, which they, of course, are active in that space. Their larger competitors, there's no one else who does the C2C sort of car thing, but there are, of course, competitors on the bus side of things, and they are at a disadvantage then compared to BlaBlaCar. Gett is continuing its pivot. Of course, Q3 better than Q2 recovery.

People prefer to go by car inside cities rather than go by public transport. The company is continuing its pivot from a more classic ride-hailing to a SaaS business, a software. They sell a software to big corporations to handle all their ground transportation. We did, during this third quarter, invest a little bit more in the final round of Gett. It was SEK 3 million. It doesn't really change the overall picture of things, nevertheless. Gett, as we try to point out in this report, is very strong. Again, back to this has become a preferred means of transportation inside cities and Voi is in the center of that. They've clearly now become the largest player in Europe.

Unit economics are very strong, both in terms of swapping batteries, driving down OpEx, and the lifetime of the scooters going into multiple years now, and so the depreciation factor coming down. They've, in fact, been EBITDA positive since July, double-digit at the group level, so very strong. We've spoken about this, but the big effect on the COVID-19 on the e-scooter world, or at least the e-scooter world in terms of Europe, is that the U.K. has opened up for e-scooter platforms and basically every city across the U.K. is now launching e-scooter platforms and are all doing this under licensing. Voi has basically doubled their licenses overall because they've picked up pretty much everyone, and many of them exclusive in the U.K. U.K., of course, being a very big market for this, it's made them the clear leader in Europe.

Not only in terms of activity across their existing markets where they operate, where they have pushed away from competition, but also in terms of licenses, which is, of course, a very important part of this business. That has meant that they are attracting serious attention from large investors in the U.S. The company did close a round during the course of this quarter. We invested SEK 10 million, and that's been up slightly. It's really catching the attention of some very large investors, their leadership in Europe. Everyone has been waiting sort of to who will pull away and who will be the leader, and we want to back that one. It's looking very likely that they won't have to spend so much time in fundraising.

They're getting a lot of inbound, which will be interesting both in terms of valuation, but also in terms of them getting funded, also in that sense, sort of pulling away from competition. Those are the big ones in our portfolio. We were sort of thinking that we talk a lot about those big ones, and I hope you all listened in to the Capital Markets Day or Capital Markets Week that we did last week, where five companies presented, and those were the four big ones and Swvl. If you missed those, you can look at recordings, which are available on our website. The four largest holdings in our portfolio, so the four companies that presented outside of Swvl last week, that is about 65% of the portfolio.

We're not about to sell any of those, because there's a lot of upside in each and every one of those. We, as you know, permanent capital, no stress to sell whatsoever and can hold those for a long time, and we think there's lots of upside. We still thought we'd sort of, what if in an Avito fashion, those got sold and we distributed that money, again, in an Avito fashion, what would show up under the shadow of those four companies, in the same way that those four companies showed up from the shadow. When the shadow of Avito was gone, those four companies became more relevant for us, for what would be the drivers in our portfolio. We thought that we'd use the opportunity to highlight and do a little bit more focus on the smaller names.

All of them are performing very well, and they are attracting attention from large investors. They all look to be repriced, and they are becoming more and more material in the portfolio. They are like next gen, in tennis lingo, they are the next generation here. I think in some years, they will have grown enough also in terms of size of our portfolio to catch the attention. It's good to focus on them a little bit. First out of Swvl, and Swvl feels superfluous to talk about because both Danny and Mostafa, I think, presented the company very well at the Capital Markets Day the other week, that was on Friday, a week ago. I basically would encourage you to have a look at that.

It's a company that, of course, so they solved a big problem in these large metropolitan emerging market cities. They basically solved mass transportation in those cities. Again, encourage you to listen to Mostafa, but this clearly has network effects, a lot through the data angle here. The markets are enormous. If you look across these classical emerging markets, you're basically looking at a SEK 150 billion market, which is, I think you could call it broken. Again, I think Mostafa will probably be the first Arab entrepreneur to build a truly global product, right? This is now at some SEK 250-ish million. I think this is maybe the one that will help us move to SEK 1 billion and beyond amongst the small ones in our portfolio.

There are others, and two that are fundraising now and are attracting a lot of attention, and rightly so, are Booksy and Dostavista. Booksy, I think we talked about before, but it's a SaaS-driven booking platform for the beauty industry. Stefan Batory, Polish guy, started this in Poland. They basically dominate Poland, and they've expanded this into the U.S. It's really the starting point from a SaaS business and the revenue generated by that, then going from that sort of base into a marketplace, seems to be a more attractive way to create the marketplace, than the more traditional ways to build it, which many people have tried and not really succeeded before. We know people, it slowed in the second quarter, COVID-19, people didn't cut their hair and didn't fix their nails, et cetera.

It's come back in a big way now in the third quarter, and we're super excited to see this company and the attention that it's getting from investors. Only 1.5% of our portfolio, and only about SEK 50 million right now, one that we'd like to fund as it sort of continues to grow. I know it's getting attention from quite large investors in the U.S. That's interesting. Dostavista, it's essentially a marketplace for last mile delivery. It offers on-demand logistics for SMEs within 90 minutes or at a certain exact time. It of course started in Russia. It's profitable in Russia, and it's used that experience and tech to grow in other emerging markets.

Of course, this is one of these sort of areas where COVID had a positive effect, but that positive effect is continuing for them. They're growing very fast. GMV now is about SEK 100 million, and take rate, we'll have them down to about SEK 20 million, SEK 30 million. That's something that we expect to double every year for quite a few years. We think this will basically reach SEK 0.5 billion In revenue some years down the road. As they create increasing amount of visibility that they can sort of deliver a market and a profitability that they have in Russia and other emerging markets too. I think you'll basically see that SEK 500 million from revenue is entirely possible, network effects type of margins below that.

You can sort of sense that this company will revalue significantly from the sort of SEK 100 million where we have it marked today. I thought I'd stop there and open up for questions. If the operator could help us, that'd be great.

Operator

Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. That is zero one to register for a question. We have a question from Lars-Ola Hellström from Pareto Securities.

Lars-Ola Hellström
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Hi, Per.

Per Brilioth
CEO, VNV Global

Hi, Lars-Ola.

Lars-Ola Hellström
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Hi. I guess the CMD last week covered most of it, but one thing that I noticed in the report is Voi and potential for another financing round. Is it that growth in U.K. is exceeding expectations widely, and that a new funding round might be needed to fully deliver and take the opportunity there? Is it so we should interpret that line in the report?

Per Brilioth
CEO, VNV Global

Yeah. Well, it's early days in the U.K., right? We're only a month or so in, but the whole market is executed under licenses, and Voi's really made a killing in terms of those licenses. Yes, activity there will be large. They just raised funding, which covers their start there, but that seems to be a market that will grow further. London, of course, is yet to open up, which will happen in the next quarter or two. The company is not in a need for an immediate funding just now, like five minutes after they closed the round we led during the second quarter. They are getting attention and more capital will be needed to cement the pole position that they have now in Europe.

They'll be optimistic about entertaining the interest that they get from a different sort of league of investors, if you will.

Lars-Ola Hellström
Analyst, Pareto Securities

What kind of investors do you see coming in now when they have proved themselves that they can be profitable? I guess investors, in general now, is viewing the e-scooter industry differently compared to just six months ago.

Per Brilioth
CEO, VNV Global

Absolutely. These are growth investors, right? Very large growth investors writing SEK 100 million checks. There's a bunch of those that got involved early with Lime and Bird, but there's a bunch of those who didn't, and they have been waiting for the e-scooter market in Europe to take form and a little bit pushed ahead by the COVID-19 situation in the second quarter. It's now taking form, and Voi is pulling away. That I think is putting them in a good position in terms of funding, too.

Lars-Ola Hellström
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Okay. A question here about Babylon. We all saw their great presentation last week. Given the valuation you have in the balance sheet right now, how should we interpret if Babylon delivers on signing the value-based contract here in Q4, so they will have an annual revenue run rate of SEK 600 million by end of this year? Would that be a trigger for a revaluation in your model if they are able to close those deals or how do you see it?

Per Brilioth
CEO, VNV Global

It's difficult to, in advance say, "This will revalue," et cetera. Clearly, value-based care is a super interesting opportunity for them. It's a very large part of the U.S. health industry, primary care macro. If you want to become present there in a big way, it's a very natural starting point. Also on the back of, it makes very logical for Babylon to do this on the back of the performance that they've so clearly demonstrated in the U.K. with the NHS, which is not strictly value-based care, but which basically assumes responsibility in a similar fashion to value-based care. I think it will be when you have sort of a half a year or a year in the bag, so to speak, of experience, and we as financial analysts can look back on an entry and revenue starting to be logged accounting-wise.

I think that visibility will be easier to reevaluate and potentially in a big way. Now it's a little bit too early to do that, despite them being very advanced on these contracts and revenues has clearly started to come in. One should also bear in mind that, of course, value-based care, in a traditional sense, is not a super high-margin business. That's also the opportunity for someone like Babylon who can digitalize a traditional way of running value-based care, which they have done in the U.K. with NHS and then taken hospital costs down by 35%. When you can demonstrate that that's also relevant for these sort of existing pools of revenue, visibility into that, I would say that that's a very good reason, a good trigger for reevaluation.

Lars-Ola Hellström
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Okay. You still haven't used so much of the cash you raised, but can you give some update on what share you expect to invest in the existing portfolio and what share for new investments?

Per Brilioth
CEO, VNV Global

We spoke about this going into the rights issue. We had a couple of opportunities that were large and that were not new. Some of them never materialized for different reasons. So, Voi we've announced, and we've announced a couple of investments. Inturn, we haven't spoken about. Inturn we've all in all invested now SEK 11 million. Inturn is a SaaS business for large corporates inventory. That's also like Booksy, is a SaaS business that develops into a marketplace. We find that sort of path of evolution super interesting. That is an example of a new investment. We've made some more which are smaller than that, and sort of in the larger scheme of things are still sort of smaller.

I would say that the main opportunity and one that we're engaging in as we speak, and hopefully we'll be able to sort of report more on that when we do this next time around in three months time, is that there's super interesting opportunities within the existing portfolio in the big names and in some of these sort of next generation stars kind of, who are all seeing sort of attention and should fund themselves because they're performing well and should be aggressive. I think we have quite a bit of stuff going on as we speak, and it's quite focused on the existing portfolio.

Lars-Ola Hellström
Analyst, Pareto Securities

Okay. Thank you, Per.

Per Brilioth
CEO, VNV Global

Thank you, Lars-Ola .

Operator

I remind you that if you want to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad now. There are no further questions registered, so I hand back to the speaker.

Per Brilioth
CEO, VNV Global

Well, great. Well, thank you very much for listening in, and I look forward to talking to you early in 2021. Until then, stay healthy and safe. Thank you.