Victory Park sells Prosper loans – In line with the previously stated strategy of reallocating capital from marketplace lending to balance sheet lending, Victory Park Speciality Lending has announced that it has sold its Prosper marketplace loans. The loans sold represented approximately 4.1% of the fund’s NAV as at 31 October 2017, reducing its marketplace loan exposure to 3.3% and the look-through gearing ratio to 0.22x. The impact of the sale on the NAV, which they estimates to be approximately -0.56%, will be reflected in the December NAV announcement.
Portfolio sales such as the sale of the Prosper loans have helped accelerate Victory Park’s strategy of reallocating capital away from marketplace lending investments into balance sheet investments, which consistently have generated higher returns with lower volatility.
They say that they were able to immediately reinvest substantially all the Prosper sale proceeds into two new balance sheet investments, as well as other existing balance sheet investments. After this reallocation, Victory Park Speciality Lending expects the balance sheet investment exposure to increase to approximately 79% by 31 December 2017.
About Victory Park Speciality Lending
VPC Specialty Lending Investments is a UK Investment trust. It is targeting an 8% per annum dividend yield (paid quarterly) and a net total return in excess of 10% by investing in loans originated by the online lending market. It intends to invest in and lend money through multiple platforms, diversified by geography (UK, US and Europe), product (consumer and small business), and structure (whole loans, senior credit facilities and equity warrants). Equity or equity-linked instruments in lending platforms will represent up to 10% of the portfolio, in some cases this equity will be taken in exchange for VPC Speciality Lending Investments providing debt capital to their platforms. They may use leverage (up to 1.5x net asset value, i.e. 50%) to enhance returns.
VSL : Victory Park sells Prosper loans