At this point, maybe the silence also speaks volumes?
One would imagine it would be in Springvest’s interest to mention it if they truly own this Donut.
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They can’t comment at the moment as the silent period is ongoing.
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A quiet period doesn’t mean that nothing can be said; rather, “essential,” “significant,” etc., events must be disclosed immediately.
Of course, this donut release isn’t Springvest’s own event, but as you can see from the share price, it is highly material in terms of valuation. Therefore, the company could reasonably communicate about this even during a quiet period; no one is going to crucify the company for it.
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Springvest’s way of reporting those ownership stakes is absolute garbage. For example, in the Dispelix case, they reported in their interim report that they own 1.1%, but then in an exit situation, they didn’t get anything out of it because of special rights tied to them. And then there’s the Verge and Donut Lab case and the points @ValkoinenPeura raised in relation to that.
What on earth is this? How can an ordinary investor invest in this company if
A) Springvest does not account for the effect of dilution on the shares they own
B) There are poor terms in these shares or options that in practice limit the upside and increase risk in a downside scenario.
I hope that the new analyst @Kasper_Mellas will start challenging the CEO regarding these points.
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In case anyone is interested, I checked the holdings of Springvest’s top 5 owners from Euroclear, and they are the same as in the 31.12.2025 listing. The same applies to Tuomas Lehtimäki (CEO of Verge), who is the 9th largest owner in Springvest.
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Those Trade Register details do indeed suggest that the risk of ownership dilution is quite significant. Of course, it is possible to protect against this through agreements that maintain an individual investor’s ownership stake (anti-dilution clause). However, I don’t know if these are in use at Springvest. According to my understanding, VC funds more typically limit this risk in the shareholder agreement with terms that require the company to have management option programs approved by the investor. I’ll try to dig into this as well in the next interview. In any case, the scale of Donut Holding’s option rights seems really large, considering that a compelling financial reason is required for these as well. I am not a legal expert, however, so take these observations with appropriate caution.
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As I understand it, Springvest was organizing Verge’s 2023 convertible bond round and received a certain amount of options/special rights as a fee. Since then, Verge has had numerous other funding rounds, and as far as I know, Springvest hasn’t been involved in them, at least not as an organizer.
Against this background, I think it’s highly unlikely that Springvest owns 0.6% of Verge and the companies resulting from its demerger. My own estimate of the current ownership is in the 0.1–0.3% range, and as the number of shares increases, it will be even less.
In my opinion, it’s completely crazy to buy into this Donut “lottery ticket,” at least through Springvest.
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What worries me about Springvest now in general is whether they actually end up with any meaningful ownership in the startups for which they organize funding rounds. In my view, the whole investment case for Springvest is that they have skin in the game themselves, unlike, for example, Invesdor, where you can end up with all sorts of junk.
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