Swedish technology and startup investor, Kinnevik AB said it suffered a net loss of SEK 13.6 billion for the first six months of the year.
Kinnevik is a major owner of Nigeria’s iROKOtv, a video on demand platform that streams third party and originally-produced Nollywood, African films, TV series for a global audience.
Earlier this week, we reported that iROKOtv has sold off its production unit called ROK Studio to Vivendi’s Canal+ for an undisclosed amount.
The losses which is an equivalent of $1.4 billion using the current exchange rate, saw the company ending the quarter with a net debt position of SEK 5.7bn which is a corresponding leverage of 6 percent of Kinnevik’s total portfolio value.
The major dent to that led to the losses was its eCommerce & Marketplaces which brought in a 25% negative return on a year on year basis.
Kinnevik said its other investments which include Nigeria’s iROKOtv, Enuygun, Karma and Zanui brought in a negative return of 27%. The company did not do a break down of the losses because it has since categorized them as ‘other’ companies in its portfolio.
As a result of the underperforming nature of its ‘other’ portfolio, Kinnevik said it did not invest any capital in those ventures for the past six months. The net value of the other ventures fell to SEK 308 million compared to SEK 661 million in the last year.
