Good morning and a warm welcome to the stock market morning this Wednesday, September 17th. The stock market looks set to open higher this news-heavy morning. And among other things, we have received news that Verisure is coming to the Stockholm Stock Exchange and that they will also raise 34 billion kronor in connection with this. New developments surrounding the failed bid for Integrum today. The company blames technical details and then we have Sebastian Siemiatkowski who wants to move his Klarna shares to Flat Capital. So an exciting morning. And with that in mind, we have the aforementioned Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski in the studio. Welcome here.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
0:53 ↗
Thanks. Nice to be here again.
Yes, again. Just. It wasn't long ago and Ulf Pettersson is here too. Welcome.
Yes, we will also be visited by David Bagge from Marketmate here a little later. But this morning we received the news that Flat Capital is proposed to acquire Double Sunday, which in turn owns 6.5% of Klarna, which is currently wholly owned by Sebastian Siemiatkowski. And thereby, Siemiatkowski consolidates his complete ownership of Klarna under one roof. A transaction of SEK 90.5 billion. This means that your entire ownership in Klarna will now be included in the braid, if you understand it correctly.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
1:30 ↗
Exactly, that's right.
And even then the voting shares.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
1:35 ↗
Yes, the voting shares are in Double Sunday. So that would mean that, and they work in such a way that when other people sell their Klarna shares, you lose B shares. Which then means that over time, the more Klarna shares are traded, the greater voting influence those who do not sell will have.
And why do you choose to do this?
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
1:56 ↗
No, but I think we've talked about Flat and how Flat has had a fantastic journey so far under a fantastic team that has worked on it. We've made exciting AI investments that we think have been very successful, that have been very unique. We have done this with Defender, which was our first active investment. But some of the questions that have come up are that we want to make sure that we have more capital and access to it, to be able to do bigger things. It has been important. Another thing that has been brought up is that people feel that I have reduced my ownership over time. So this is a way to kind of boost my share of the Flat and show my dedication to it. And then we kind of wanted to be able to do things that we said, like when OpenAI came along, I felt like: 'We should actually do much more than the tens of millions we invested. We would like to make a much bigger investment.' And for that we need to be bigger. And with this change, Flat would probably become one of the 100 largest companies on the stock exchange. So, as we can see, there are many benefits to boosting the braid a little.
Curious about the ambitions with Flat. But first of all, what kind of dilution is going on here? What is this costing shareholders at this point?
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
3:06 ↗
Yes, so there has been a negotiation between the board and me about finding the right set-up and then the ordinary share has been priced at the average volume price according to the conventions that apply and in the same way they have tried to price the braid in line with how the braid was priced in the last new issue. So that's how we've tried to find a good balance. But there are more details for everyone to read in the press release.
But what that means is that the braid will be 90% made up of Klarna shares. The other 10, there is a risk when you have such a large holding that the other holdings become somewhat meaningless. Even if you do great things there, it won't be visible in the braid because it's kind of Klarna-ish.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
3:52 ↗
Yes, one could think so. But on the other hand, this is how it is. Partly, when we did OpenAI at, I think it was 20 or 30 billion dollars and now there's talk of valuations that are 10, 15 times more, it suddenly becomes quite a lot of money. So what I have is that it has been fun to see and follow the development of the other holdings as well. But with that said, it's also like this that with Flat, we've always said that we hurry slowly. We have an ambition to try to create a new investor. But then you can't, unfortunately, you don't always have the luxury of being able to satisfy all parts all the time. So right now it will be a little more like that for a period, but then there may be an opportunity to bring in more money and thus invest in others and get a more well-balanced portfolio again.
But I think this is interesting, this investor thing that you're talking about, because you've mentioned here before that you want to fight Wallenberg. Why is it so important?
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
4:38 ↗
No, but I'm starting the fight more because I think it's a bit funny to say that. But I would say this, I think it's like this, it's not like I was sitting and reflecting yesterday. It's so amazing that we have this family that should be like that because we thought, so now we're talking about billionaires giving away half their fortune. Here, it was like Knut and Alice were like this 100 years ago and kind of chose to give everything away to research. So it's the ultimate socialist capitalism, sort of. We have a family that has kind of led these companies, helped them establish themselves, become world leaders, without actually actively owning much themselves, but sitting on and representing these boards, and then all the money goes to the foundations where they support research.
But is that what you want, like braiding too?
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
5:20 ↗
No, but I think this long-term approach is to be able to go in and support companies in Sweden and dare to be long-term, not this quarterly thing but think long-term, think big. It has kind of created industries that Sweden today benefits enormously from. So that I, yes, it is incredibly attractive and exciting. And to be able to, on some kind of very humble or smaller scale, still be able to try to find similar sets. But it's not just them who have done it. I mean in Sweden we have a tradition and there people look at Latour, look at Kinnevik. I mean the industrial defense, maybe some would happen is like Lundberg today. So there's kind of a tradition of working this way.
How, but how are you supposed to raise capital then? You can do it, we talked about it here, you can do it in three ways. Either sell Klarna shares, get dividends for the Klarna shares or mortgage them or do new issues, to sort of get money for today because you have no cash flow in these holdings. What is like step one here?
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
6:16 ↗
No, but this is exactly how it is, as we have seen at other investment companies, it is advantageous if any of the portfolio companies over time have dividends and so on. There are no decisions about dividends for Klarna today, but it is not inconceivable in the future that Klarna could start making dividends. And then there is also an advantage in that with these B shares, Double Sunday would then have more than 10% and thus also be able to have very tax-efficient dividends. But even in the shorter term, when we have raised money for the Flat, the consequences have been that I have become less and less of an owner, and many shareholders have actually said that they are a bit worried. They would like to see that there are flesh and blood people who have an idea and who are driving this forward. And with this, we are able to make new issues, which in the long run would reduce my shareholding a little, but would provide more liquid funds over time and allow us to make more interesting investments.
Exactly. Good. What ambitions do you see going forward with Flat? Because you talked about Defender, you kind of got a little new niche in there with defense. There has been a lot of AI focus before and now it is also quite capable of focusing, so to speak. But what is the vision going forward?
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
7:25 ↗
No, but the vision is actually the same as it was when we started, to kind of make good investments with good returns. It may sound a bit simple, but the fact is that it's really all about the end result. And we always asked for a very broad mandate. We always told all the property owners that we also want a broad mandate. We want to be able to do things actively, we want to be able to do things passively. We want to be able to invest where we believe it will yield good returns for the owners. With that said, I should also say that we have some very exciting things in the pipeline. There are some exciting AI investments. So there's no one else, so we believe that there are still a lot of interesting investments to be made there. But with the help of this and with the help of being able to possibly do more in the future, bring in more money, even that Flat could potentially list itself now on OMX and become on a larger list. It will give us the opportunity to maybe make a little bit bigger investments in these, compared to Investor, there are like ABB and Atlas Copco and these slightly more heavy industries.
Will you still be like AI?
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
8:23 ↗
I think there's a balance. So AI is, in a way, the heavy industries of the future, if you put it that way. These are companies that have the potential to become incredibly important industrial companies in the future. But then I also think that in this very changing world, I also believe that AI will accelerate profits and growth in some more traditional industries because you will be able to apply this technology to be able to develop them more quickly and make them more competitive. And it's also a case that I think is very interesting to see what can be done, the possibility of using AI to, like there and there, for example, Flat in a future world could be an active investor that adds competence and understanding from AI but in a more traditional industry and can help accelerate them, help strengthen competition, make them more competitive so that there are very exciting opportunities, I think.
It's also now exactly a week since Klarna's listing in New York, so how does it feel to be a stockbroker? New life.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
9:23 ↗
Yes, exactly. No, but it feels a bit like what our CFO usually says, that Klarna was probably the world's most public private company. And I think that's a pretty apt description. We still did quarterly reports, we had a bond that was listed here in Stockholm. So many of those requirements and expectations have existed here because we are also a bank and so on. But it's fun and I think it felt like people received it well and we've gotten a lot of attention, which I think will help us expand in the US.
Do you feel like you've landed right in this attention bubble or will you continue to invest a lot of money in marketing in the US? Is it needed after this note?
Yes, no, but what we have said is that I think that we will probably right now there is such enormous potential in the Klarna from the perspective that you have 111 million users. While in comparison to, for example, Revolut here in Europe or Firm in the USA, you still have a much smaller revenue per customer. And that's because we offer fewer services and we have people maybe using us more sporadically. So there is enormous growth, but that can only happen by simply developing more attractive and even better services for our existing customers. So that there is only one big one there. But it is possible that in the future marketing will also be an important component.
And now that we have the CEO of an American listed company here in the studio, I still have to ask because there's been quite a lot of talk about Trump. He wants to eliminate quarterly reports and thinks reports are only needed once every six months. What do you think?
No, but I myself have said at some point that I have sympathy for trying to think new things and trying to think about how we could reduce this quarterly economy. Because I'm a big fan of long-term thinking. So to dare to invest, to dare to be consequent in the long term. So I think it's like this sometimes I can laugh a little when you write about a new CEO who has just taken office and it's the first quarterly report and then just look at him, he or she is a genius like just yes but like really that quickly and changed the company then it hasn't but then it's probably been cleaned up quite a bit on the last quarterly report and then he or she comes in like this so that but you work a lot operationally so you know that sometimes it takes several more years like to change a business or something else and it requires like a long-term approach and dedication. I mean if you look at the Klarna, how many situations have I been in, at least in 2015, like 25% of our ownership wanted us to get out of England, out of the US, we would like, so there were an incredible amount of forces to do this, no, but now we are investing in short-term profitability here in Sweden, the Nordic market, like that would have been devastating. It would have been a disaster without it, and then you need a brave owner who thinks long-term and dares and understands that it takes time to change and establish yourself. And it was the same with Germany once upon a time. We definitely wouldn't be left in Germany in 2012 anyway. So, I think that's super important. So from that perspective, one can sympathize. Then I think, unfortunately, that it feels a bit semi-realistic that I don't know what would happen then. Already today, people are sitting around waiting for that quarterly report and I can imagine what would happen to the stock market if there was a year of silence and then just a boom. So I don't know, it would probably get a lot of volatility on the stock market, so I have a hard time, practically speaking, I'm very interested in how to solve that, but I can sympathize with the idea of a long-term perspective, and above all, we don't mind that there are company updates quite often here.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, thank you very much for coming to the studio and we'll see you again in a week, I guess.
Yes, exactly. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaking of which, we have more news. Today, I mentioned at the beginning that the home alarm company Verisure is on its way to the stock market. Confirming today that it is going to the Stockholm Stock Exchange and has, so to speak, issued an intention to float. In connection with the listing, the company will also raise SEK 34 billion. However, there is no timetable for this listing. Ulf, this is also very big news that we talked about a lot so far this week. Anyone who had hoped to get a listing here this week might be disappointed.
Yeah, that probably won't happen this week. It should have been in the press release here. But it's still like it's getting closer, there's going to be a new one, so it's not far from here. It will be fun to see. We don't really know the real price tag for it either, whether it's 250 or 300 billion or whatever people are speculating about. But it's a fantastic listing once it's done and with, say, 250 billion in market value, you're in the top 10, clearly the top 10 on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, so it's huge.
Yes, it's a giant company. A spin-off from Securitas once upon a time. Well, it's been many years since much water has flowed under the bridge. But you talk a little about the fact that the Körling and Douglas families here are perhaps not as happy with this journey that their spin-off has had.
No, but it's quite exciting. We're in a new spin-off period here. We have five companies that will be established within a year here. We had something like that yesterday. We had a huge wave of spin-offs there in '07, I guess it was then. Securitas was split into three or four parts, and in the end it even became Securitas Direct. And pretty soon Körling regretted that it wasn't good to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Got something back from the companies, but not this Securitas Direct, which has now become, which is several, yes, a couple of times bigger than what Securitas was worth, and it was like that, I think they would have liked to have kept this and had an additional 300 billion in value for their Securitas shares.
Exciting. Yes, we still have a lot to talk about after nine. We have also brought David Bagge here in the studio, who has his take on where the stock market will go in the future. But now the Stockholm Stock Exchange has actually opened.
Yes, we're going out to Helena Johannes Magnusson. How does the Stockholm Stock Exchange open here then?
It's a positive opening, just as expected. The broad index and the large-cap list are up about 0.3%. At the top there we find, among others, SAB and Nibe. At the bottom we find Boliden and Astra. And I think I'll start with Astra because they have come up with double study results. Firstly, they have announced that one of their drugs for COPD has not reached the goals in a phase three study. But at the same time, positive results are being announced from a third study regarding the disease lupus. And we can see that the stock is down about half a percent. But then we have Flat Capital on the screen and Sebastian Siemiatkowski, he delved into this news that Flat is now proposed to acquire Siemiatkowski's wholly owned company Double Sunday and Double Sunday then owns 6.5% of Klarna and through the acquisition, Siemiatkowski's entire ownership in Klarna would now go under Flat. And a Klarna or this Klarna share, I should say, is valued at 90.5 billion kronor. Yes, the deal will then be executed, among other things, by newly printed shares at a discount of 13% to yesterday's closing price. I won't talk more about the news, but yes, we just saw that the stock was up, but now it's turning down a little bit, but there's a lot of trading there, as you can see, the stock is bouncing. Yes, we move on to a big movement we have on the market, a rush that we now see in Integrum. It is about Ostoo and Centrix's failed bid for Integrum, where we have now received news. And I know that you will go into more detail about this in the studio, but I still think I will keep it brief because then it is about Integrum meaning that the main owner Rickard Brånemark has accepted the bid but that technically it has not been possible to transfer it to Avanza. If the shares had been included, the 90% acceptance condition would have been met according to Integrum. I should then say that Avanza's CEO says on his side that they have not made any mistakes in this situation. But we can see that it will at least give the stock a bounce of about 14% now. They fell about 45% yesterday after the bid was filled. But let's move on to some more straightforward news. We have the Verve Group on the screen. They rise a full 4%. They have announced that they have bought a German company for 270 million. And ABG has a buy rating on Truecaller with a target price of SEK 60. A good bit above what they are currently trading for, i.e. 44, but they are up a full 6%. And at the bottom we see that the Bico medical technology company has added them because we have learned that Chairman of the Board Rolf Klaasson, who is then 80 years old, will be leaving due to health reasons and he will be temporarily replaced by member Maria Ranka. But if we broaden the picture, we can still say that the Stockholm Stock Exchange is positive right now.
Many thanks Helena for that update. And Ulf Pettersson, you were here during the entire interview with Sebastian Siemiatkowski. Now we saw that Flat Capital was down a little bit here on this but not very much considering that technically it was still 20 kr. What do you think about this whole setup?
No, but it's like Sebastian said here that you're going from a market value of two or three billion up to 10. And that means that future issues, because that's what it's going to be about, to sort of raise money to invest, will be 10 times larger or five times larger than they have been before. So you can grow a little faster, take slightly larger stakes in these companies that you find. That is probably the most important reason. If we take the braid stock then, it has been, it started at 25 and was down to five and now it is back at 23. Now it will, or at least should be valued just like the Klarna stock because it is 90% of Klarna. So then the share price should be a carbon copy of the Klarna share and thus a, shall we say, a duller but safer share in some way and not move as much and then it is important that this braid share does not become quite dull, it is important that Sebastian and his people at this Flat Capital make sure that it grows quite quickly. He said we should hurry slowly or something like that but you probably want to have it down, so if you had a private portfolio, you wouldn't want to have 90% in a piece of paper. You might want to have 25-30 like these other investment companies have because then it will be like then it will be better then. But that's probably where your landscape will eventually be.
Yes, you mentioned it a little when I was in the studio too, that it could be a problem if they are too heavily weighted there against Klarna. But David, do you have any thoughts on this setup and the future of the Flat Cap?
No, but I think he, there is a very clear vision of what he wants with the Flat. And if you believe in Sebastian's vision, I think it will be good in the long run. Because if there's someone, it's a Swedish business leader, now I have in mind American stock market figures, but a Swedish business leader who has an eye on AI, that is, the technological development within it, it's like Sebastian, so no, I think that in the long term, I think it will be good.
Yesterday we actually also received Swedish news in the AI area that Sun Labs is being acquired by Workday. Exactly. But if we look at other news from the flow this morning, Helena was talking about this with the medical shipping company Integrum, which is why the bid fell through because the bidder and Centrix had enough shares. But today, the main owner Rickard Brånemark says that if the shares had been included, the bid condition of over 90% acceptance rate would have been met. This is a bit tricky to say, but they blame it on a technical obstacle at Avanza, which supposedly meant that his shares were not counted. We have spoken to Avanza, VD Gustav Unger says he cannot comment on individual people. But what I can say is that we have done everything we should and can do. It is very sad for all shareholders, but as I said in this situation, it is not us who have made a mistake and Integrum and on the other hand, it also tells us that we are now in a formal process that is being handled by our lawyers and are not able to provide any further comments at this time.
You wonder what really happened here. But it's like a referee to say it's a dog here on something we know we don't really know like we don't have the whole picture for it so then there's a bid here and then there's the owners who don't manage to transfer their money with their shares to the bidding company so the one who's going to make the bid and if it was like a technical error then you would have just like all other bids delayed or extended by two weeks or a month and then it would have been solved but here it feels like the bidders in this case are trying to find formalities to get out of this where there was so to speak then a possibility then if you couldn't get 90% like get out of a deal like this but we still don't know that but it feels like yes we don't have the whole truth and now then this Integrum is rising a bit today it plummeted 40% yesterday and it probably has to do with some people maybe speculating that they're going to somehow manage to force a bid through the stock market board or whoever it is that's going to be able to decide this like that but as I said we don't have the whole picture clear and when you don't have the whole picture clear you should avoid investing in such stocks because it's like it's up 50 or down 50 on the flip of a coin here and that you can do it if you think it's fun although it's not stock trading but it must be very unusual for something like this to happen.
Yes, I haven't been involved in that as far as I know.
No, there will be a lot of question marks that need to be cleared up about who is to blame for this. Otherwise, we have several news too. Helena had several others on the screen but also news that Minesto is making a large issue is down almost 40% on that news. We also have Truecaller that are up 6% today. David, you had some idea that something had happened in the truck check.
Yes, there was a hike from ABG to 60 SEK, I think it was, right? Yes, but we are also in a period where it is not, we are between quarterly reports and so on, so that rate increases or decreases have a very large impact. But I saw Astra down for the third day in a row, among other things on the bridge lowering in for three days from HB so that it.
