Prosus marks down Byju’s valuation to below $3 bn; says investment in loss
Byju's as well as Pharmeasy in its earnings presentation on Wednesday. Prosus had in November last year marked down Byju’s valuation to $5.9 billion, a far cry from the troubled edtech company’s peak valuation a few years ago at $22 billion. Prosus reported revenue at $2.6 billion for the first half of FY2024, a 118% jump over the corresponding year-earlier period, while registering growth across multiple businesses as well as in most of the startups that it is invested in India.
The investment firm, however, reported a 'significant fall’ in its internal rate of return (IRR) across its portfolio, at 5% in the first half of FY24, compared with 18% in the first half of FY22, because of a few large ‘underperformers’, according to its investor presentation. The investor calculates IRR for unlisted assets based on sell-side analysts’ consensus estimate on valuation, or the most recent post-money transaction valuation of an asset if analyst information is unavailable. None of its investments in India are listed.
The bulk of Prosus’s India portfolio was in the green. It reported a 7% IRR for food-delivery platform Swiggy, 22% for executive-education platform Eruditus, 31% for business-to-business commerce platform ElasticRun, 30% for its payments arm PayU India, and 32% for e-commerce platform Meesho, according to its presentation. But Byju’s and Pharmeasy have been underperformers, with its investment in both under water.
Prosus said its IRR for Byju’s stood at -24%, and for Pharmeasy at -41%. Prosus has not yet sold stake in either of these two companies. Other companies where Prosus reported a paper loss include Delhivery, Hero, OLX Autos, Skillsoft, and StackOverflow.
Read more on livemint.com
