By Supantha Mukherjee
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Sweden's Kinnevik, one of Europe's largest listed investment firms, on Monday reported an 11% rise in second-quarter net asset value from the prior quarter helped by its investments in companies such as Pleo and Budbee.
Net asset value, which excluded Zalando's valuation of 54.1 billion Swedish crowns ($6.32 billion), grew by 12.6 billion crowns to 76.2 billion from the previous quarter.
Earlier this year it announced https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kinnevik-dividend-zalando-idUSKBN2AH0VN plans to distribute its stake in German online fashion group Zalando to its shareholders.
The company, which counts influential Swedish Stenbeck family and Scottish asset manager Baillie Gifford among its shareholders, said it had invested 734 million crowns in four companies in the quarter. [nGNE7N5TYY]
"We are not obliged to deploy capital from one quarter to another or from one year to another, but it's actually when the opportunities arise," Chief Executive Officer Georgi Ganev told Reuters.
"Two years ago we deployed around 4.6 billion crowns and deployed two and a half last year, and this year will be somewhere in the middle of that range."
On Monday, Kinnevik said it had invested 49 million euros in a 210-million-euro funding round in Nordic "neo-bank" Lunar.
Kinnevik's shares have more than doubled in the last one year as its focus on digital businesses led to many of its holdings rising rapidly in the midst of the pandemic.
While the Swedish firm's investments range from telecom operator Tele2 to delivery startup Budbee, it has deepened its focus on the healthcare industry with investments in companies such as Teladoc (NYSE:TDOC) and Babylon.
"We have generated more than 25 billion crowns out of the healthcare portfolio, and we are continuing that journey with new investments within the healthcare sector," Ganev said.
($1 = 8.5638 Swedish crowns)