VNV Global AB (publ) (VNV) Earnings Call Transcript

Okay. Someone Anyway, we'll fix that as we go along. But hey, welcome, everyone. This is our Q2. This is the day when we report our Q2 middle of summer. And -- as per usual, we prepared a few slides, and we'll open up for questions. Bjorn will explain how that works, if you don't remember. But yes, without further ado, let's kick off. So first out, Bjorn will take us through some numbers.

Sure. Thank you, Per. And as, we'll address that towards the end of the call. So let's start with the numbers. As per June 30, Vinda Global's net asset value stood at $461 million or $3.60 per share, which is flat during the quarter in dollar terms and up 2% in SEK terms. In SEK terms, NAV was SEK 4.5 billion or just shy of SEK 35 per share. For the 6-month period, NAV is down 16% in dollar terms and down 11% in SEK terms. If you jump to the next slide, we can see that the overall investment portfolio is USD 484 million and consisting of sort of $468 million worth of investments and $16 million in cash and cash equivalents. And of that investment line, approximately additional $9 million sits in short-term liquidity management investments, down from around $30 million end of Q1 as we redeployed the majority of those liquidity management investments in funding the partial bond buyback, which we completed in the quarter. And with that buyback, of course, borrowings is down over the quarter to $27 million versus $46 million at the end of Q1, and that follows the sort of SEK 167 million bond repurchase, which we completed during the quarter at SEK 104 million of nominal amount. As you also note, we continue to trade a material discount to NAV. Given the current share price, we trade at roughly 53% discount to the Q2 NAV. We've also continued to repurchase shares during the quarter. Year-to-date, we've repurchased roughly 600,000 shares, most of which were canceled following the resolution at the AGM. But as per June 30, we still hold roughly 100,000 common shares in treasury. And if we move to the next slide and just a few notes on the fair value movements during the quarter as per usual, driven by the larger holdings. BlaBlaCar this quarter is valued at $121 million, model-based up 1% during the quarter. You will notice in the report in the note package that the pre-discount multiple this quarter is up, and that's a consequence of excluding the low-margin operator bus segment, which BlaBlaCar announced that they are winding down. Dennis will come back to this later. Voi is valued at $106 million, also based on the model, also flat or down 1% during the quarter. Housing Anywhere flat, still based on the transaction that was completed in Q1. Newman valued at $36 million as of end of June, now a model-based valuation as the previous transaction just moved across 12 months old, and that's down roughly 2%. And finally, sort of the 2 next largest holdings, Breadfast, continues to value on a relatively fresh transaction at $30 million, so flat over the quarter and Boadk up 5% during the quarter to $26 million, primarily driven by slightly higher peer multiples. All in all, these 6 companies represent close to SEK 27 per share in aggregate or 78% of the NAV. And before handing back to sort of Per and Denis and walking through the portfolio, as one note on sort of cash, we ended Q2 with $16 million in cash, which I already mentioned and an additional sort of $9 million in liquidity management investments. And the primary movement in that cash during the quarter, again, was the partial bond buyback that we completed in April. With that, I'll leave it back to Per, who will continue to walk you through the latest developments and key holdings. Thank you.

Yes. Sort of the structure of the portfolio is very similar. over this quarter, everything sort of flat, at least the big ones. So not much to dwell upon here. And as Bjorn has sort of said, continue to trade at this discount. We bought back stock, and this is very much sort of top of mind on how to sort of -- how to deal with this. But this graph is familiar to you all. On a sort of aggregate level, at least for the top 6 companies make up a bunch of the current NAV, although I'd really like to stress that beyond these 6 companies, there's some really exciting stuff that is doing phenomenally well right now. But spirit of sort of simplicity, it's good to sort of focus on these 6 ones. And as you can see, sort of this portfolio continues to sort of grow on the revenue line, but -- and even if the numbers are smaller, the portfolio has turned profitable and that profitability is growing. Those of you sort of who followed these slides over the last couple of quarters will note that the $130 million level for 2025 is lower than before, and that's because blaBla car is basically changing and where they're getting rid of these long-distance sort of bus trips in Europe, which is not really sort of a marketplace business, low margin, big volume. So revenues have gone down, but profitability has gone up as that sort of business of that business line is being discontinued. -- which we are very happy about lot who are marketplace focused. And we'll dig in a little bit more into the larger holdings. But what we -- in this report, we also, of course, talk about a VNB 2.0 kind of future. It's not really 2.0, it is like a 14.0 by now or something. But we're very intensely at work in establishment -- establishing a fund structure, a regulated fund structure with sort of people who do regulated fund structures in order to start our first fund that will be part of managing. And we're super excited about that. And that's partly driven by the fact that we see a lot of stuff, interesting investment opportunities around our portfolio and in our network at large. And of course, the discount only allows essentially for buybacks. But we think that in our sort of proximity in our network, there is people -- there are people who want to sort of get exposure to the kind of deal flow that we see. And we also think that us as shareholders in some way also would benefit if we have exposure to the kind of deal flow that's floating around us -- and then establishing a regulated sort of platform to sort of pick up on that deal flow feels very natural and very good to -- so the plan is that the first sort of investment vehicle will be one that focuses on our historic sort of presence in emerging markets, marketplaces, embedded fintech, et cetera, where there's a bunch of stuff going on where we really feel that we're maybe uniquely positioned to sort of to execute on that kind of deal flow. So very excited about that. And then this really also comes on the back of that we have over the years, you may have noticed that we have a bunch of sort of SPVs that we are -- we have in our in our structure. And on the back of the success of those, it feels like a very -- it feels very natural to sort of to capitalize on deal flow by continuing those SPVs into a fund and do off-balance sheet investments, which over time could also generate sort of value for -- in terms of fees, et cetera. So very excited about that. So more on that over the quarter. So we're hard at work, and we think we'll be back to you within the quarter we're in and talk more about that. We also have a Capital Markets Day coming up in mid-September here in Stockholm. And if not before, then by then, that will be a good opportunity to sort of set out the strategy I'm now giving a teaser on in more detail. So that is something background-wise that I thought I'd touch upon. We continue here in the portfolio and BlaBlaCar, we've alluded to it for a while now, but also in this call that BlaBlaCar is being -- has discontinued the stuff in the business lines that are not network effects kind of economics and which is essentially the old regulated bus business in Europe. And that has basically taken down revenues a bit and profitability up. We're very excited about that. And going forward, we're -- from now on, as that sort of aggregated slide showed, we'll be showing the business on a pro forma basis without this sort of this low-margin, high-volume operated bus -- European operated bus system. But the marketplace stuff like car pooling and bus marketplaces, which is different than operated buses in Europe, obviously still remain and are much, much higher margin businesses. Beyond that also, BlaBlaCar is really doing well. I mean, yes, humbly partly because this is, well, what we call a countercyclical business, nearly a countercyclical business. In tough times, it's -- people are more prone to share costs by sharing a car ride. And even more so during times when the petrol price is obviously high, which it is now on the back of the war in the Middle East, it's the cost of driving a car, especially over long distances is high. And so people go to BlaBlaCar to save on these costs. So Dennis, is there anything else on BlaBlaCar that we should talk about at this juncture?

I thought I'd take the opportunity to deep dive a bit on the modeling as we've done over the past years, we've explained that we value BlaBlaCar on the back of a sum of the parts model. And we've always had 3 segments. So it's the carpool segment, which is high margin and BlaBlaCar has been operating since the start. It's their OTA business, which is primarily a business through which they sell bus tickets via a marketplace model. And it's the low-margin segment, we've called it historically, which has predominantly been this operated bus segment. And as Per has already mentioned, BlaBlaCar is now shutting this business down. It's -- the wind down has started now and is expected to be done by year-end. In this business model, BlaBlaCar takes risk on utilization of buses. It's not a take rate on a bus ticket sale business model, but BlaBlaCar rather decides that a bus will go from point A to point B, contacts a bus operator and then promises them a certain fee and hopes to kind of fill up the buses. It's a high-risk business model. It's a utilization risk business model. And for that reason, they've decided to shut it down. It was never profitable and it lacks the network effect dynamics that Per has already mentioned. As Per has also mentioned, but just to be clear, bus tickets will, of course, continue to be offered on the platform, but via the OTA business model. So this has no real impact on user experience. The same supply is available on the platform. Revenues will be lower once it is fully done, so from '27 onwards, but EBITDA will be higher, both in absolute terms since this was an unprofitable business, but then, of course, also in terms of margin as you're excluding revenues and have higher EBITDA. So margin will go up quite significantly. This is probably best explained or illustrated by looking at the gross margin of the business going from roughly 50% as a weighted average to north of -- or around 90% after excluding the operated business segment. So a much kind of cleaner P&L, if you will. Specifically, in this quarter, the multiple has moved from roughly 2.7x revenue on an NTM basis that we had last quarter to 4.2x in this quarter. This is pre-discount. -- so we always apply a 10% to 30% discount as a reminder, but these are the multiples that you will find in the report note package. But this is really predominantly a consequence of excluding the low multiple, low-margin revenues from OB, but then also coupled with some multiple uplift on the remaining businesses that BlaMaCar operates. Just wanted to give that extra color.

That's good. Going further on then in continuing the portfolio, we -- Voi and Voi is really killing it in terms of operations, but there's also other good stuff going on. which is that there -- I mean -- or I should say our -- there's our biggest competitor, Lime has IPO-ed now after the end of this report. But it's -- yes, it's -- there's finally a listed -- an equity that's listed within this micro mobility space, which is a big and sort of stable business. Obviously, Bird listed back in the days and subsequently went south and now is no longer listed and owned by other people. But anyway, Lime is a big thing in our world. And so Lime is a very, very good peer for Voi, which we will absolutely use going forward as an important input to when we need to look at a listed sort of peer group for multiples on which to value Voi. I mean, as you know by now, the preferred method is to use a transaction in the actual name. But if there is no transaction, then we go to the model and the model uses a peer group, there's been nothing perfect out there for Voi. Now there is something that's very, very relevant and which will be important going forward. The Lime IPO was, of course, it's -- the timing of it was -- what should we say, it's screamed of -- there's a sense of -- you get a sense of that this was not driven by by market timing, some sort of peak or anything, probably on the contrary, you don't do an IPO after SpaceX and before Anthropic, the attention of capital markets are elsewhere. And that's been very evident in the sort of the attention that this stock has gotten. We've seen a bunch of reports out there, which is plainly just sloppoly done around the name. If you just read the prospectus, you took the time to read the prospectus, you get a clear picture. People haven't really made any time to sort of properly analyze this. So it will be good when the big banks that did the IPO all come out with reports, which is in a month or so, you will have a bunch of research coming out on Lime, which -- and from then on, it will be very interesting to see the pricing of this going forward. And come future quarters, this Lime will be an important factor for how we put together our valuation of Voi. I think it's sort of fair to say that subjectively, Voi will trade at a premium. If they were both listed, Voi will trade at a premium, not least because Lime has a lot of earnings, we estimate maybe half of their earnings comes from Paris and London, which are 2 cities where they've been essentially alone, and that's changing. And the big sort of benefactor of that is, of course, Voi. So there's -- we see a lot of growth in Voi now and going forward also from those 2 cities. So there's a different growth profile, I think, is the way to put it. But very interesting and a very, very positive event for the sector as a whole and also Voi. But there's a bunch of other details that we should mention at Voi, Dennis...

Yes. So as Per has already alluded to, Voi has had a very strong start to 2026. On an LTM basis, the company closed Q1 2026 with EUR 188 million of net revenue, which is up 36% year-over-year, and adjusted EBITDA of almost EUR 30 million, up 40% year-over-year and positive adjusted EBIT of around EUR 1.4 million. Looking at Q1 alone, the company grew 38% year-over-year. And since, as Per already mentioned, Lime is now public and Dotter, as you know, they have a public bond and therefore, also public financials. We now have good visibility on the relative performance of these 3 players. And we note that Voi was the company growing fastest among the 3 in Q1, growing revenues, as I said, 38% year-over-year, with Lime at slightly below 32% and Teardot actually declining the revenues year-over-year in the first quarter of the year. For Voi, momentum has continued in Q2, and the company has won a good number of tenders and licenses in everything from Marseille to Askenbedum to Frankfurt and N, so across Europe really. They also won contracts in Copenhagen, where Voi is back with over 4,000 e-bikes and in Stockholm, where the market from July 1 and onwards moved from 3 operators that it has been for the last couple of years to 2. And Lime was actually the company that was not allowed to continue while Voi was essentially leaving a bigger and a better market for Voi. In terms of valuation, Vivendi values Voi on a forward-looking EV/EBITDA model as in previous quarters. In Q2, Voi is valued on a pre-discount multiple of around 11.1x EV/EBITDA, which after VNi's discount, typically between 10% to 30% means an effective multiple below 10x EBITDA has been applied. As Per has elaborated and explained the rationale behind Lime is not used as a peer in this quarter, but will be used as a peer going forward. Last on this slide, the company, as you can see on the right-hand side of the slide, keeps accumulating rides at a very high pace. And I think it is fair to assume, as you can see on the graph, that they will reach 0.5 billion lifetime rides since inception shortly, which is a very big milestone just around the corner. If we jump to the next slide, Per. these financials we've already covered, but I encourage you to keep an eye out for their second quarter report, which is due to be published on July 23. You can find it on Voice's IR website. And we at VNV will also issue a release on the back of the report on July 23. If we move to the next slide to Housing Anywhere, the third largest holding. Housing is valued on the base of a transaction that happened in Q1 where the company raised new primary capital and VNV participated with EUR 1 million in new funding and converted some convertible loan notes to equity. In terms of performance year-to-date, the company continues to grow revenues, but has also invested quite a bit into various parts of the business. For instance, they have scaled their AI booking assistant across the platform, and this now serves over 50% of the platform traffic. They're also working on a number of initiatives to improve conversion in their funnel, which we're also starting to see results from. So we think that this will drive volume growth for Housing Anywhere in the quarters to come. And with these kind of investments being done this year and with the fresh capital that they raised earlier this year, we believe that conditions are in place to push growth harder from here, and this will be a topic we will push the company in the quarters to come. Going to the next slide, so Newman. Newman, as we already alluded to, moved from a transaction to a model-based valuation in the second quarter. The model-based valuation is down 2% versus the transaction mark. As you know, Newman's biggest product is now weight loss via their GLP-1 offerings. And this market, particularly in the U.K., has been very volatile, both on the back of pricing, but also many other factors that have played to this. And this has pushed Newman to adjust their approach in how they run the business in 2026. Heading into this H2, we see that retention is now at the highest levels since the start of the year or since February essentially. We're seeing that half of new customers are now locking into commitment packages. -- making them more sticky retention-wise. We're also seeing that Neman is about to launch an oral Wegovy drug, which currently has an 18,000-person waiting list and hope to see progress from these initiatives. On product, Newman launched a 2.0 offering on June 30, so very recently. This is essentially a single experience that lets Newman bring men's health, women's health and diagnostics onto one platform. We're very excited about this launch, and we'll follow this closely during the rest of the year. That's it for me, and I'll hand it over to Bjorn to cover Breadfast and Bo.

Thank you, Dennis. Yes. So Breadfast, again, is our investment in Egyptian quick commerce and online grocery business called Breadfast. -- company continues to do well, growing fast sort of GTV or GMV, if you call it, is close to $300 million on an annualized basis. The company is valued based on the latest transaction, which they announced back in February of 2026. So the last tranche of a $50 million fundraise was announced back then. The company now has more than -- or close to 60 fulfillment points across Greater Cairo and Alexandria and serves approximately 500,000 monthly users. In addition to sort of the core grocery business, there was a number of initiatives such as Breadfast Pay and Breadfast Food that continues to see sort of strong early traction. VN owns 6.8% of Breedfast post the latest fundraise. If we go to the next slide P, which is the last of the large 6 holdings, Buchadkt.omany continues to do well. Model-based valuation is up roughly 5% over the quarter based on higher peer multiples. The company continues to see sort of stronger margins. They have had a few years where they sort of focused on reaccelerating top line growth. And now they're also doing that and improving the margins, which we think there's sort of still a lot of room to grow from this level. Company has also been focused over the last sort of 2 years in increasing the payment revenue, so both online and offline payments to flow through the Bucharek platform, and that is currently the highest sort of driver of growth for the company. And then also sort of in H1 2026, the company did acquire a business called Si, which is a leading Swedish business management system for gyms and fitness centers or personal trainers. That is both sort of adding roughly sort of 10% top line and additional sort of margin. So overall, the company is doing well. We continue to own just shy of 16% of this company. And with that, I think we're done with the sort of top 6 companies, and we will move in to Q&A. Again, if you want to ask question, use the Zoom function and we'll walk through them over time.

So I think sort of there's a number of questions regarding Voi and then sort of the Lime IPO. I think we already did say that the Lime multiple will be reflected from next quarter in the valuation exercise and not this quarter. So that's the first one. And then sort of another question here from at SEB. How do you view Lime's IPO as it's impacting Voi's operation? And then following, how would you describe the current exit landscape? In the event that Voi was to pursue an IPO, would you remain -- aim to remain a shareholder?

I don't think the I don't think it really sort of affects the operating landscape or how Voi goes about its business, the fact that Lime has IPO-ed. I mean it's a big positive that there is more transparency around Lime. Now that's a benefit in our direction. And that -- those sort of benefits have flowed in the other direction since Voi was the first company to go public in the form of a bond, a public bond and then several sort of industry players or several, is it one? I think Bird in its new incarnation tried but failed to go public through the bond. But anyway, so transparency is good. But other than that, I don't think it changes much. The Lime IPO is is, I think, as we talked about earlier, it's primarily been driven by a debt for equity restructuring. So debt holders will own like 60% of the company post money. And so it was -- that was the primary reason for doing this IPO now, which is maybe obvious since it's not perfect timing to do it when there's so much attention and capital going to these sort of mega gorillas in the form of SpaceX and Anthropic. So -- but anyway, we think it will find its feet well, and we look forward to research coming out in the name from the larger banks around capital markets, which will get a different kind of spotlight on this sector. What was the other question, Bjorn?