Kinnevik

Company Update:
Kinnevik announced a new interim CEO in the wake of the Ningi Research short seller report identifying internal issues.

The new interim CEO is Rubin Ritter, current board member of Kinnevik and former CEO of Zalando for 10 years, thus including when Kinnevik was shareholder of Zalando. Although this will worsen once again the governance score of Kinnevik, Zalando was the main success story of Kinnevik and his mandate include a “thorough and unbiassed assessment of our team, our culture, our ways of working and our portfolio”, which could thus lead to much needed changes before a new CEO (external it seems, which is good news), could build on a healthier foundation.

We thus expect a slight positive reaction this morning but reiterate our cautious stance for now given the lack of sufficient margin to offset current governance inefficiencies.

Expert Opinion:
Stock is down 38% YTD which is substantial,  Likewise  the discount to NAV increased to 33% which even in light of the alleged issues reported by Ningi Research is high, especially when considered from an historical standpoint. The announcement of the interim CEO stepping in is good news and we will see who they eventually hire to run the company. Yet we agree with Alexandre and believe it is too early to jump back in the ship. Holdings' discount to NAV tend to widen during market turmoils. Note that the stock has been part of our Short and Hold list for more than a year and generated c49% outperformance over the period. 
For reference, the perf of our short and hold list over the long run is pretty good, significantly outperforming the SToxx600 5 years out of the last 7.