Auden AG: Portfolio focus tightened; major investor takes position in OptioPay

Berlin - 30. May 2017

• Intensified focus on OptioPay, among Auden's most powerful portfolio value drivers
• NN Group, a leading insurance and asset management company, announces investment position in OptioPay
• Exit from portfolio holding in ViaLight

Auden AG is intensifying the support which it provides to OptioPay, the innovative payments platform which is a core value driver in the Auden investment portfolio. As an important part of this, Auden is preparing for a significant and imminent increase in its ownership stake. Under the plan, Auden's existing shareholding of ten percent in OptioPay will be doubled through the acquisition of an additional stake of ten or more per cent.

OptioPay offers the possibility for companies with business models involving high payment volumes to individual recipients to sign an outsourcing agreement with OptioPay, which then assumes responsibilities for these transactions and business processes. The recipients then have the option of taking the credit amount not as a traditional cash payment but instead in the form of products, services or gift cards which may be for a significantly higher value. This is thus a win-win-win situation, not only for the individual recipients but also for the OptioPay client, such as energy providers who must regularly process refunds of excess gas and electricity payments to their customers, as well as for merchant partners, who are thus able to directly position their products and services against a potential customer base with purchasing power.

The attractiveness and great potential of OptioPay's business model has been gaining attention from other major investors as well. Following Auden's initial financing of the company in 2016, since which time it has played a key role in guiding the portfolio company's strategic development, NN Group NV, one of Europe's leading financial groups with headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, has recently taken an investment position with the aim of further supporting OptioPay's growth and internationalisation.

Auden AG is likewise planning to significantly expand its involvement with Optiopay and to increase its shareholding. As part of this strategic decision, Auden's senior management has, together with its supervisory board, taken the decision to tighten the company's future focus exclusively on its core business of financing start-up ventures with highly scalable business models, and to draw back from other approaches, in particular investments in special situations.

Christofer Radic, CEO of Auden AG, explains the company's strategic decision and related action plan: 'We are extremely pleased to have found additional opportunities to expand and intensify our involvement with OptioPay, and we aim to effect these changes in our portfolio as quickly as possible. The potential and scalability of OptioPay's business model are being proved out as ever more clients and merchant partners recognise the value offered by its platform and begin to integrate it into their business processes and systems. In addition to the ongoing transaction-based fees typical for this business, the company generates significant service-based revenues for integration and operation, thereby further underpinning the viability and scalability of its powerful model. Our decision to significantly expand our engagement in this value driver has thus been an easy one, and NN Group's recent decision to likewise invest is a strong validation of our own assessment.'

'Our portfolio planning process along with various conversations with our investors - particularly in the context of our disappointing share price performance in recent months, despite solid results at the level of our portfolio holdings - have prompted us to carefully examine each of our portfolio companies and to tighten our strategic focus,' continues Radic. 'This being the case, we have decided to prioritise our resources into selected investment holdings, in particularly within our core investment strategy into digital start-ups, and to selectively exit from others, such as from our position in ViaLight, which was intended to be our first foray into special situations. While we have decided not to pursue further transactions of this type, we would like to emphasize that this does reflect on the technology, the management team or the potential of ViaLight, in which we continue to have great confidence.'

Commenting on the 2017 financial outlook for Auden AG as originally announced on 4 April 2017, and which remains in force, Radic added: 'The portfolio actions which we are taking should not have any significant impact on our full-year earnings, and thus we confirm our previously announced projection for 2017.'