Edited Transcript of VEMFsdb.ST earnings conference call or presentation 30-Jul-20 1:00pm GMT

But actually, we sit back and look at the range of outcomes we had as we mapped it out in March. The delivery pretty much to the company has been towards the top end of the scenario analysis. Obviously, there was a broad range of analysis. And there are some dark scenarios in there. But we’re very comfortable on a portfolio and a company level that we stood up through the window and delivered. And most importantly, from a numbers point of view, it’s been impressive from what we can see.

And specifically, within that, it’s — from an NAV point of view, Creditas had a very strong Q2, and I’ll talk about that name in a second and, obviously, important for us, our NAV, our future. But also, as we’ve seen in most — in many digital businesses across the world and digital finance, fintech falls into that, some parts within that, obviously, had a very positive experience of everybody rushing to do things digitally, distant, online and away from cash, et cetera. And that was, obviously, digital payment space. And Juspay, our mobile payments company in India and TransferGo digital remittances across Europe, obviously, stand out in this beneficial category regard. So I would say, on a broad basis, it’s, obviously, not specific company-by-company, if we look at the performance of our companies in June, July, we’re broadly back to start of year levels, January through March, these companies, the metrics, AUM growth, et cetera, have basically come back to that level at this point in the cycle.

And in line with that, in this quarter, we moved our NAV logically back to a growth footing, lot of micro-level work done on this, but a 20% jump in our NAV quarter-on-quarter from what we saw in Q1. So I think the bottom line here on this slide is very much that it’s — very encouraged by what we see in our portfolio through this window. Our confidence is growing, obviously, with their deliveries. But obviously, there’s a natural overlay of COVID, what happens next on macro and then, obviously, the implications for sectors and then companies. So obviously, you got a caveat in the background that we don’t forget.

Next slide is just a reiteration of what we said, Slide #3, a reiteration of what we stated in Q1, and this is the long — the medium- to long-term scenario. We’ve always been investors in fintech, which is a long-term secular growth trend. We always believe there’s an off-line to online, cash to digital, and that wall is coming through gradually at a nice pace across the world.

But one thing COVID has done for all things digital is really a step-change in their growth, step-change in acceleration of that growth. And for an investment company like ours, in a space like this, it’s clearly medium-term positive for what we do, and we’re seeing it even in the short term and in a lot of our companies.

For the 2Q ’20 highlights and developments, just a summary here of highlights during the quarter, net asset value, financial results, some of the key numbers and events from the quarter. I think most importantly is a reiteration of what I said, a return to confidence in everything that we see in our companies, and, obviously, driving of our NAV back in the right direction. Also, we did make 2 small investments in the quarter, but very small, in-portfolio investments in TransferGo and Nibo, combined $3.3 million between the 2 in the form of convertible notes. Our NAV itself recovered to $223 million, and that’s down from what we started at the start of the year at approximately $250 million, but up from the Q2 number, which was $186 million. And so a 20% jump quarter-on-quarter or move.

On the Swedish krona front, obviously, the SEK has been gradually strengthening against the dollar, similar to many currencies globally. And from a SEK per share, we ended the quarter Q2 at SEK 3.15 a share. But obviously, the krona continues to appreciate in value versus the dollar. So that’s probably closer to 3 plus or minus today. And cash position at the end of the quarter, similar to Q1, with approximately $20 million. That’s cash and capital.

Moving on, NAV evolution since inception. It’s just a chart we throw into this presentation to show the gradual uplift, a bit of volatility, obviously through this window, the return to growth and a NAV of $223 million. NAV and NAV evolution quarter-on-quarter, obviously, important and a bit of color behind the various moves on a segment, country, company level. But obviously, most important to what happened in our NAV, both in Q1 and Q2 was the evolution of Creditas. Obviously, it’s a big asset for us, a very important asset for us. And the evolution of that story, we effectively grew in confidence with that story through the quarter. It’s a company which is very in control, through this window, actively pursued a strategy of going cash flow positive, which we love to see, and stress test companies actively just flicking a switch and moving the cash flow positive as it ramps down its customer acquisition expense and focused on benefiting from the portfolio build-up historically.

It watched through the quarter as asset quality remained more or less stable and funding lines stayed open. So a very healthy stress test and also the — a lot of confidence in that name to be able to get back on a growth footing from a forecasting point of view. We were very cautious back in Q1. We’re starting to move up the notches from low-end towards medium-end forecast outlook for Creditas and also a name that we can have confidence and predictability into a 12-month view. And hence, that all fed through to a return to what was close to the investment round we did with the company 12 months ago, and our position moved up $30 million from just above $50 million to $80 million.

And the other notable players and beneficiaries of this window, as I mentioned, was digital payments. We still have Juspay on our last investment round valuation at $13 million for our stake, but TransferGo increased by 58% to $21 million on our mark. And it’s effectively a company which is in the digital remittance space across Europe, developed Europe corridors out into emerging Europe for the most part and adjusting a — in the Q2, a spike or growth in people moves away from cash to digital in that space, and they’re well placed to benefit and are benefiting from it. And it’s a company that we didn’t change their forecast for — through the crisis, and actually it’s running ahead of our core forecast, which we set at the start of the year, never mind any adjusting through the crisis.

So they were the big drivers of our NAV. I would say, from a sector point of view, where we’ve been more cautious is any company with a direct balance sheet exposure because while fintech may be benefiting from the digital move by all, these are still balance sheet plays, and they do have classic macro exposure. And given the uncertainty that we’ve got rolling into the second half of this year and into 2021, those are companies which we’ve kept on a short-term bias in terms of forecasting, and we’re staying conservative. We are valuing them on a 2020 as opposed to a rolling 12 months. So keeping everything on a conservative tight leash point of view, enough names like REVO, Jumo and Xerpa.

So there’s no specific offense to those companies. It’s just the nature of the space that they’re in. And hence, we’ve got to be conservative with our forecasting and valuation until we come through the cycle and light at the end of the tunnel.

Moving on to portfolio mix and commentary. What I’d say here is, of the $223 million of NAV. Creditas is now 36%. So it’s our biggest holding, and hence, got bigger in this quarter given the move and will be important for us going forward. And that’s the natural way of companies like ours, investment companies, you tend to get spanned out through the cycle. And in our recent past there’s been names like Tinkoff and EasyGo, and they’ve become a bigger piece of the pie. And obviously, they’re compounding at an even bigger move going forward.

Konfio is at 13%, and Mexican secured — unsecured small business lender and moving more broadly into digital financial services for small businesses and then the 2 payments companies. So there’s a concentration growing around the top 4. And at this stage, with top 2 are about 50% and the top 4 being 65% of our NAV. We, as I said, $20 million at the end of the quarter. And while year-to-date, the focus was very much in Q2 on our portfolio companies, making sure they were stable, delivering capital, et cetera for the fight ahead, gradually through Q2 as our confidence returned and clarity returned, and the pipeline is starting to pick up again and our time spent on that — is starting to grow again.

And just from a regional point of view, Latin America now is nearly 75% of our NAV. And we have no problem with that, given how high we hold Brazilian fintech ecosystem and option opportunity. And we hold it in super high regard, and we’ve no problem with company, country, regional concentration, if we are strong believers of the value that we can create in that space.

Moving on to the share price, NAV per share discount we’re trading. From a market cap, we went back above $200 million in this quarter. So moving back positively across that line. Obviously, day-on-day, these things tend to move, but trading at much closer discounts to NAV, around 10% plus or minus. And that’s — there’s a lot of work being done on our side to make sure the story is out there, is getting communicated properly, research investors’ awareness and that’s starting to pay dividends as both the company delivers, our portfolio delivers, confidence returns, and with that, naturally, investors return in markets when they’re efficient and help to make that happen.

And final slide before we open up to question, just outlook and guidance for the rest of 2020. I think it’s worth reiterating the performance of Q2. It was very healthy, the healthy stress test and a strong portfolio reaction, both in the team at VEF and also our portfolio companies. With that reaction with those data points, we naturally have more clarity, more confidence. And then obviously, the bigger top-down shift towards digital is a nice, kind of tailwind in everything we do. This has all led to a more positive outlook for second half of 2020 than we would have had at the end of Q1, just a natural factor of the performance and where we are today. So that all feeds into our confidence. But at the same time, one needs to be very vigilant of what is a very fast-moving top-down environment that we all live and operate in, whether that’s COVID, macro, politics or a mix of all 3 together.

And I think on a more micro level, Creditas is starting to shine even more. It always has — there’s always a big part of what we are and the value that we’re creating, but that’s becoming even more obvious to us, especially through a window like this, where it stood up. It’s 36% of NAV. And if anything, we could see that growing in the future, given the trends that we’re seeing in that name and the size it is at this stage and the compounding nature of that. And on digital payments front, clearly, 16% exposure of our portfolio to a very space that is naturally benefiting from all the movements that are going on around us. I could mention many other companies here, but that’s kind of 50% of our NAV and in a very strong position for us going forward. What I’d say is the 2Q NAV recovery was obviously important. And I’d like to think it’s the beginning of a trend. One needs to be careful on forward guidance on these things. But from everything we see on a micro level, we’re very confident that NAV can keep on moving what the companies are delivering and the nature of these valuations compound from here. But obviously, we’re very aware of top-down factors.

And final point is investment pipeline. We’re getting more and more back into pipeline. It never went away. It just got deprioritized for the window. And Brazil and India are probably the 2 big markets we continue to spend most time on, we see most opportunities. And then on the frontier space, Egypt has caught our eye, and we’ve done a lot of work on that year-to-date, and we’re tracking a couple of opportunities there, but that would naturally be smaller checks should something happen there versus India and Brazil.

But at the same time, I think it’s good to be patient in this environment. It’s still a volatile environment that we operate in. And I like to think price points and valuations are more in our favor than they were before. And I will stop there, operator, and very happy to open up to questions from anybody who wants to ask.

================================================================================

Questions and Answers

——————————————————————————–

Operator [1]

——————————————————————————–

(Operator Instructions)

Our first question is from Joachim Gunell from DNB Markets.

——————————————————————————–

Joachim Gunell, DNB Markets, Research Division – Junior Analyst [2]

——————————————————————————–

So to start off, I have a couple of questions. I mean, I guess, new business models are emerging now in the midst of COVID-19. Could you just talk a bit more about which subsectors of fintech that will see higher growth in your perspective? And if there are any new subsector, perhaps, that you want to add to your portfolio that isn’t the part of it yet.

——————————————————————————–

David Francis Nangle, Vostok Emerging Finance Ltd. – CEO, MD & Director [3]

——————————————————————————–

Yes. No. Thanks, Joachim. Appreciate the questions. Look, what we see, mostly in fintech, you — first and foremost, you get payments and you get credit in a lot of the businesses and then investments maybe as a third pillar. And a lot of the opportunities that we’ve seen over time have been in those 3 subsegments and then derivatives therein. And I think through the COVID window, natural beneficiaries were payments, especially online, but even off-line in the kind of iyzico-style model so — and then cross-border. So payments is very front and center the beneficiary of this window and will — should continue to benefit, albeit maybe not to the full extent, but they saw the spike in Q2 going forward.

And credit, it really depends on where you sit; and whether you’re sitting secured, unsecured; geography; nature; whether it’s on-balance sheet off-balance sheet, et cetera. But generally speaking, credit is the place where there’s some headwinds for sure. And those headwinds can be light, or they can be heavy depending on the space.

Investment tends to be, I think — in a low-interest rate environment globally, there’s been a healthy shift towards individuals funds, but just investing in more interesting asset classes beyond the classic bank savings. So I think the payments and the investments have seen the benefit of this window where loans is mixed. What I’d say is that I don’t think we’ve seen naturally new segments come to the floor during COVID, but just obviously some segments catching our eye more than others would have been short term. But I think pre-COVID in during COVID, we’re spending a lot of time in payroll. And we like that space. Great, very low customer acquisition.

You know the customer’s payroll flow, and you can do a lot of things around that. And that’s going to drive us into the world of benefits as well, which is a very juicy business from a unit economics point of view. And we’re getting into some of the deeper tech like banking-as-a-service space. Look, I think in our portfolio, we’ve got a little bit of everything. And that’s — it hasn’t been by design. It’s a function also of the countries we invest in and the opportunities that show themselves. But I wouldn’t say we have a favorite sector or segment from here or what comes next. But definitely, we’re spending a lot of work and time, payroll, benefits, banking-as-a-service and then into investments as well, where we’re exposed via Magnetis on the robo-advisory front. But obviously, there’s a lot more plays in that space now coming through.

——————————————————————————–

Joachim Gunell, DNB Markets, Research Division – Junior Analyst [4]

——————————————————————————–

Very clear. Another question perhaps, talking about, I mean, deal flow and the financing landscape. I mean we have seen some mega runs in, I mean, more established fintechs now. And I mean seed investments in perhaps your area, say Series A to B, perhaps even C have come down slightly. And I mean, to me, it makes quite sense that investors want to put more money in safer bets. But how do you think, I mean, about funding pullbacks for parts of your portfolio?

——————————————————————————–

David Francis Nangle, Vostok Emerging Finance Ltd. – CEO, MD & Director [5]

——————————————————————————–

Yes. Look, you’re right. I think at the outset of this window back in March and April, you got a very quick move from the winners or are best-in-class to say, let’s grab more capital while we can, either build a war chest so we can make the most of this window or just have a bigger buffer for defense. So we saw those moves by the poster boys and including Revolut and a bunch of names in that.

And it was the right thing to do strategically. You saw a lot of others, deals just being put on hold for the window and no offense to anybody specifically. What I would say is there is a lot of dry powder on the investor side. So it’s not like the public side and you might get assets — outflows of assets and less demand. There is a pent-up demand pool and looking at fintech and a lot of, obviously, new economy areas across the board. So I’m not worried about the pool of demand dwindling. It’s there, especially for later stage. But earlier stage, I think seed with the Series A has been dropping off. I think for Series B and C, I think in a lot of our markets, there wasn’t a great amount of capital in this space anyway. And we kind of like it that way. We tend to turn up at Series B, at Series C level and less capital can be quite advantageous when you’re shopping. But from our portfolio point of view, everybody is well funded for the next 12 months.

Some may want to grab capital to be more aggressive now that they’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel on a bit of a growth footing, and I kind of pointed Creditas on that front, but there’s a couple of others. So yes, I think the capital is there. I don’t see any of our companies needing capital in the near term, i.e., 12 months, and those that think they want to raise capital, I’m quite confident they can get it.

——————————————————————————–

Joachim Gunell, DNB Markets, Research Division – Junior Analyst [6]

——————————————————————————–

And then coming back to — you mentioned that, okay, some of the leaders, obviously, haven’t — their — it’s more accessible for them to get funding. But coming back to that, I mean so as part of your portfolio is obviously starting to emerge as leaders in their respective, say, niche. But can you talk a bit about how COVID-19 has impacted, say, the competitive landscape? I guess it’s hard to talk about for the entire portfolio, but for the — for your winners, if we start there.

——————————————————————————–

David Francis Nangle, Vostok Emerging Finance Ltd. – CEO, MD & Director [7]

——————————————————————————–

Yes. No. I think it’s — I guess, if you have established winning names in certain spaces, then irrespective of how COVID affected their underlying business, I think it’s obviously competition positive if your companies have capital and runway and are in good positions because you don’t get the copycats, you don’t get the fresh companies funded in this window. And if anything, the bank competition, which is the competition in many of our markets, is going through classic cycle stuff and going through classic listed bank playbooks, where they have to focus on the next quarter and the next quarter as opposed to the 5-year plan, which they’d like to focus on, but they’re not allowed.

And that means very short-term focus. That means turning off new ideologies and new lines of attack and reducing costs and really riding the loan book after quality cycle. So I think if anything, it’s a better window. You could — 3 months ago, I would have argued that this is the window for the banks to win. They have the capital, they have the regulation. They’re in a great place to provide everything that the society needs in this window to get through. And obviously, you come out as brand winners as well as just competition winners. But 3 months later, looking through the eyes of our portfolio and how the banks are operating, I actually think that it’s a good window for the winners in our portfolio competition wise.

——————————————————————————–

Joachim Gunell, DNB Markets, Research Division – Junior Analyst [8]

——————————————————————————–

All right. And just a final question then. I mean we touched upon this also, but in the trade-off between, I mean, returning or reassuming, I mean, multiple x-es of growth and — versus a preservation of cash, I mean, can you talk a bit about how skyrocketing unemployment has impacted your holdings ability to attract and retain, say, tech talent in LatAm.

——————————————————————————–

David Francis Nangle, Vostok Emerging Finance Ltd. – CEO, MD & Director [9]

——————————————————————————–

Yes. No, it’s — look, talent was hard. Pre-COVID, it was exceptionally hard in a lot of markets globally to secure and hold on to the best talent, most specifically tech talent. When you have to top down, hovering up by Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon of a lot of talent around the world and in every country around the world, having an ecosystem of new economy companies coming through and then the ability to — the poaching talent and rise in the price of talent was all over the place. So it was very difficult, pre-COVID.

The initial part of COVID, it was — obviously, it changed quite dramatically as a lot of talent found itself on the street. And I think now we’re somewhere in between. So I think a lot of companies let a lot of people go initially in the first part of this window. Some of them are starting to rehire. So I think we’re somewhere in between, but we’re in a better kind of balance in terms of demand and supply for talent. And because it was going aggressively the wrong way, and the best talent, especially in the heart of the locations, when you’re talking West Coast or parts of Europe, were getting very expensive. Now we don’t have that specific element in a lot of our geographies because they’re less interesting geographies to put it that way, the less — the focus on them, but it is there.

——————————————————————————–

Operator [10]

——————————————————————————–

(Operator Instructions)

Our next question is from Herman Wartoft from Pareto Securities.

——————————————————————————–

Herman Wartoft, Pareto Securities, Research Division – Research Analyst [11]

——————————————————————————–

So a couple of questions from my side, just starting with the revenue forecast for Creditas. So just to clarify, are you now back to the similar 2020 and 2021 forecast that’s before the pandemic? And also, has there been any change to the forecast for the underlying segments? I think that previously, the payroll segment was the one that was expected to grow the fastest in this time. Has there been any change to that? Or how has that been?

——————————————————————————–

David Francis Nangle, Vostok Emerging Finance Ltd. – CEO, MD & Director [12]

——————————————————————————–

Yes. Okay. Let me talk, I guess, generally on this topic. If we go back to March, Creditas, and we sat down with them as a Board, presented us with 3 outcomes, kind of a low, middle, high road on a very simplistic basis of how business could deliver through this crisis and outlook for 2020.

We had 2021, but the focus was very much short-term in what we can see and what we can deliver. If we go back to Q1, when we did our mark to model on Creditas, we would have focused on the low road just to be conservative because we just didn’t know. And Creditas didn’t know when we had planned. We backed ourselves, but we felt from a modeling, forecasting and then valuation point of view, the low road was tangible..

And this, in fairness to Creditas, they have a history of hitting the medium to high road, if anything. So we knew the history, but we didn’t know the future given everything that was in our faces of COVID. In this quarter, we’ve notched it up to somewhere between the low and the middle. So by no means are we going overboard or stretching valuation, as market multiples, as the currency in there, which are assumptions and do tend to move. From a forecasting point of view, we’ve upped it about 40% in our models from where we had it in Q1. And we’re also doing a 12-month rolling model now with Creditas because we have the belief, we have the data points, we’ve got some levels of predictability and outlook for it.

So I would like to think that Creditas will hit their medium to high end, which is their — what they do, is their history with us, but we’re not going to go there yet in terms of forecasting. And I think from the core business and what has delivered in Q2 or grown, I should say, overall, it’s going to be very hard to answer that clearly because what we did at Creditas, we took a very deliberate view on Q2 and the unknowns. And we effectively switched off customer acquisition machine, reduced that by 80% to 90%. And customer acquisition is how we build our loan book and our revenue flows over time. For those who could live off the revenues coming through from the existing book, which is the way the business works. So reducing that dramatically for Q2, turning to cash flow positive, while watching asset quality, while watching the funding market and see how our clients behave with a great stress test.

In that environment, we overly focused on maybe home, which is a safer product and better quality of auto and some payroll. So it was — it wouldn’t be a fair — ask the same question in 1 or 2 quarters, and we’ll be able to tell a much more steady state, which part is growing in line ahead of forecast coming.

——————————————————————————–

Herman Wartoft, Pareto Securities, Research Division – Research Analyst [13]

——————————————————————————–

Yes, all right. Yes, I see. And the second question regarding your — I see that you kept the — you kept Konfio and Magnetis and Xerpa on the calibration methodology. So I’m wondering, I can see why you would keep the Konfio holding there since now a lot of uncertainty regarding the unsecured space in Mexico at a moment. But what would you like to see for Xerpa and also Magnetis to be moved to a mark-to-model model?

——————————————————————————–

David Francis Nangle, Vostok Emerging Finance Ltd. – CEO, MD & Director [14]

——————————————————————————–

Yes. No. It was more of a — I would say, as I said earlier, the ones that were more conservative with — from a forecasting valuation point of view are more the balance sheet plays, whether we’re doing the calibration or whether we’re doing the mark to model. So I wouldn’t see calibration versus mark to model being a negative either way. I would say the ones that were shorter-term forecasting and shorter outlook and valuation are those direct balance sheet plays. So these will roll off calibration. I guess we’re kind of thinking when we get to the 12 months post last investment round. We move from last investment round for a lot of our companies to calibration for those that weren’t 12 months beyond this. But we’re going to simply roll them off one by one. And what I’d say to, kind of, answer your question slightly differently is Konfio is — actually, it’s — we’re kind of holding back on that. I’m actually very impressed by what they delivered through Q2, a very clear stress window for an unsecured SME lender. But the areas they grew in — they were on the front foot with getting a full banking license, which is key for being a broader financial services play, moving into different areas with the small businesses credit as a service and different advisory work for small businesses. So there’s a lot going on there, and the funding side was excellent. They did very well on the funding side through this window. So it’s only an asset quality cycle. I mean only but that’s just numbers. We have the capital and the wherewithal to deal with that. So I see Konfio coming out the other side of this very strong.

And with Xerpa, it was kind of a situation where we invested in the business to really push down on growth of a new product this year, but a lot of that had been delayed, obviously, by elements of COVID. So it’s kind of like a delayed situation in rolling out their growth. And with that, obviously, we mark down the valuation.

And just Magnetis because you mentioned also, their AUM levels are back to pre-COVID levels. Business is back on the front foot and with the real equity and investment culture growing in Brazil, both from online brokers and robo-advisers and asset managers, and they’re benefiting from that. So to answer your question and come back to the core of the question, in the next quarter or 2, I think everything will be on mark to model at that stage.

——————————————————————————–

Operator [15]

——————————————————————————–

(Operator Instructions) And there seem to be no further audio questions. So I will hand back to speakers for any final comments.

——————————————————————————–

David Francis Nangle, Vostok Emerging Finance Ltd. – CEO, MD & Director [16]

——————————————————————————–

Yes. Thank you very much, operator, and thank you, everybody, for dialing in or signing in to the webcast, and thanks for your continued interest and support. And as always, if you have any specific questions or general, please feel free to write directly to myself or to Henrik Stenlund, who’s our CFO and Head of Investor Relations. Thank you very much.

——————————————————————————–

Operator [17]

——————————————————————————–

This now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.