JSC Development Finance Institution Altum Group’s (hereinafter – Altum Group) outstanding financial instruments portfolio (gross) is of 503 million euros as at 31 December 2018, comprised by 18,280 contracts, including:

• guarantees portfolio of 237 million euros, the total number of contracts 11,924;

• loan portfolio of 217 million euros, the total number of contracts 6,150;

• investments in venture capital funds for the total amount of 49 million euros, the total number of projects financed by funds – 206.

Since the beginning of the year, Altum Group’s financial instruments portfolio has grown by 13.5% (69.9 mln EUR) in terms of volume and by 27% (3,878 projects) in terms of the number of projects. Among financial instruments, the fastest growth is seen in the guarantees portfolio, which has grown by 30% (54.5 mln EUR) in terms of volume and by 48% in terms of the number of projects.

The volume of the guarantees portfolio exceeded the volume of the loan portfolio in the 2nd quarter of 2018, which is in line with the objective of Altum Strategy set for 2016 – 2018: to substantially increase the volume of operations by shifting the focus toward indirect financial instruments (guarantees).

According to the unaudited interim condensed reporting data, in 2018 Altum Group has operated at 3.919 million euros profit.

Reinis Bērziņš, CEO of Altum:

“The successful last year’s performance of ALTUM is an indicator of gradual economic growth of Latvian business community and people, facilitated also by our funding, understanding and service. Good financial performance is achieved due to increasing business volume of ALTUM and cost-efficiency.

In the previous year, ALTUM issued funding EUR 159.4 million under various State aid programmes, while the total financial instrument portfolio already exceeded half a billion euros. Compared to the previous year, in 2018 the volume of new transactions grew by 44%; moreover, in line with the business strategy, the share of indirect financial instruments or guarantees in the new transactions considerably exceeded the share of loans and constituted 56% of the new transactions. In the previous year, we finalised the selection of all new generation venture capital funds managers, launched a new loan programme for small and medium-sized enterprises in rural territories, improved funding conditions for a number of guarantee instruments as well as successfully introduced a new instrument – portfolio guarantees which enable credit institution to apply ALTUM guarantee to their own financial services, at the same time setting lower interest rates for corporate loans.

Continuing our course of action, in the current year we aim at becoming increasingly effective by optimising programme management costs and making the customer application assessment more effective as well by focusing on sustainable fund raising for financial instruments.”

Altum is a state-owned company of Latvia that ensures access of the enterprises and households to the financial resources by means of support financial instruments - loans, guarantees, investments in venture capital funds - in the areas defined as important and to be supported by the state, thus developing the national economy and consequently enhancing mobilization of the private capital and financial resources. In June 2017 the Moody’s assigned to the Company a long-term credit rating Baa1 with a stable outlook. The assigned Moody’s rating of Altum is one of the highest credit ratings assigned to corporate entities in Latvia. On 24 October 2017 the bonds issued by Altum were quoted on a regulated market – Baltic Bond List of Nasdaq Riga.

         Laura Lapkovska
         AS Attīstības finanšu institūcija Altum Investors Relationships Division
         Tel.: +371 67774023, +371 26165699
         E-mail: Laura.Lapkovska@altum.lv