董事会主席声明 — Kinnevik 2024年年度与可持续发展报告（安德森告别信）

STATEMENT BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

2024 was testing. But it was a worthwhile year. It set the scene for a brighter future for Kinnevik shareholders. We now have a more focussed portfolio with meaningful ownership of promising companies that Kinnevik has deep partnerships with. The best of these are already well on the way to establishing themselves as thriving, profitable and mature businesses after surviving in a ferociously demanding investment environment in recent years. We have more work to do in concentrating the portfolio in these companies and cutting the long tail of less inspiring holdings, but this process is well under way.

As long planned, we completed our transformation into a growth investor by the disposal of our remaining holding in Tele2 in 2024. Tele2 is an admirable company, but it operates in a highly competitive and regulated sector with modest opportunities for secular growth. We hope that our next generation of investments will prove themselves as capable as Tele2 but that they can have decades of profitable expansion ahead.

Examples of the significant investments that we are continuing to reinforce, but are not confined to, are TravelPerk, Spring Health, Mews and Enveda. In my view it has been a long time since we owned as attractive a set of investments. There will always be failure in investing in young and ambitious companies, but we need to return to having major successes that can offset these inevitable problems. That hasn’t been so in the 2020’s but we are now strongly placed to see renewed vibrancy in the performance of our major investments. More details of our promising holdings are conveyed in the coming pages of this report.

The sale of Tele2 gave Kinnevik substantial cash reserves. The Board considered the best deployment of this endowment with appropriately serious intent and a long-term perspective befitting the importance of the opportunity. We proposed a combination of a significant cash return to our patient shareholders combined with a retention of significant resources to back our reinvestment into the leading companies already in the portfolio and the prospect of making new investments and forging new alliances in a landscape offering opportunities at appealing prices. It is imperative that we succeed in this challenge in the years ahead. The Board also believes that the portfolio is now in a sufficiently attractive and increasingly concentrated form to request the support of shareholders to potentially make repurchases of our own shares at what we believe to be an unduly discounted level. I should emphasise that any such action would be driven by the conviction that our own portfolio is a highly attractive long-term investment, not out of a desire to boost the short-term share price – which is the all-too-common outcome of buybacks.

The Board itself is much changed since I wrote this letter a year ago. At the AGM in 2024 we welcomed Maria Redin and Claes Glassell. Both have already proven their value in constructively but vigorously improving our disciplines and focus. We were also grateful to shareholders for approving the more recent appointments of Jan Berntsson and Hans Ploos van Amstel. Jan and Hans have taken on the Chairing of, respectively, our key Audit & Sustainability and People & Remuneration Committees. We are most grateful for their leadership.

I have decided not to seek re-election as Chair of Kinnevik at the AGM in May. It is important to take responsibility for the difficulties of recent years and to hand over to a new steward of the remarkable history of Kinnevik and to forge a better future. Whilst I fully acknowledge the frustrations of the last four years for myself and - far more crucially - our shareholders, I would like to offer some more hopeful final words. I fear the impatience of markets obscures both the roots of our problems stemming from many years back and the time that was required to address our problems. I believe that we have greatly improved our investment process and decision making and that this is now showing early signs of incipient success. I will watch with pleasure as the future Chair, Board and our diligent executive team build on this foundation.

James Anderson Chairman of Kinnevik