After forging slate financing partnerships with high-profile studios such as A24, XYZ Films and MK2 Films, Finnish investment fund IPR.VC is looking to add more “strategic allies” to its portfolio.
Timo Argillander
In the decade since it launched, Finnish alternative investment fund manager IPR.VC has grown to become one of Europe’s largest content-focused private investment funds, raising more than US$200m to date and striking slate financing deals with heavy hitters such as A24 and XYZ Films.
The Helsinki- and London-based company, whose capital raises are backed by institutional investors, pension funds, family offices and non-profit organisations, has launched three separate slate financing funds since it was founded, in 2015, 2019 and 2023.
Broadly, its strategy is to invest capital to allow companies to get projects produced and sold. Rather than investing in individual projects, it invests in larger slates of projects, which gives it the opportunity to work with companies over longer periods of time without making an equity investment in the company itself.
IPR.VC launched its third fund in late 2023 and says more than €100m (US$105m) has been committed so far. The company is still raising capital for that fund and expects it to close at between €120m and €140m by March 31.
Having been in the film and TV financing game for more than a decade, IPR.VC’s leadership team says it now has a greater sense of where it wants to focus its energies.
After looking broadly at Nordic film and TV, animation, video games, music and live events with its first fund, IPR.VC narrowed its focus to international film and television for its second, which launched in 2019. With its second fund, it forged what it calls “strategic alliances” with US studios A24 (it previously co-financed Civil War, Love Lies Bleeding, Maxxxine) and XYZ Fims (BlackBerry, Skywalkers: A Love Story, The Wasp).
IPR.VC previously co-financed Civil War
With its third fund, IPR.VC recently revealed a slate financing deal with French film studio MK2 Films, in addition to renewing its agreements with A24 and XYZ Films. Upcoming A24 titles co-financed by IPR.VC include Marty Supreme, Materialists, Eddington, Legend of Ochi and Mother Mary, while recently announced XYZ Films titles include White Mars and Mile End Kicks.
This month, it was announced that IPR.VC is behind Hildur, the forthcoming crime series based on the novels by Satu Rämö. London-based distributor Cineflix Rights has come onboard as the worldwide distribution partner. Set in the remote and picturesque Westfjords region of Iceland, the English- and Scandinavian-language six-part series is coproduced by Take Two Studios for Nelonen Media’s streamer Ruutu and Sagafilm for Siminn.
The move comes after Finnish prodco Take Two Studios received investment from IPR.VC in 2022 to adapt the books.
Last week, IPR.VC revealed that the European Investment Fund, which sits within European Investment Bank Group, had invested€25m into its latest fund.
Andrea Scarso
Over the past year, IPR.VC has put more of a focus on establishing a London-based investment team, with Andrea Scarso, formerly with Ingenious Media, joining last November as partner and investment director.
“It’s an evolution – we do the same things, but we’re growing,” co-founder and managing partner Timo Argillander tells C21. “We’re adding more in-house resources and have major growth ambitions in the long run. These are the steps we’re taking, and the new €100m fund is a good starting point to get new things rolling.”
Now, the company is looking to add more “strategic allies” to its portfolio, says Scarso, with a particular focus on assembling a European television slate to complement its long-term deals with A24 and XYZ Films. While it is more focused on the film side of the equation, the deal with MK2 is a significant expansion of its European strategy.
“MK2 is a company that’s well established, has a strong track record and is working with local European talent but also for a very international marketplace. That’s the ideal spot for us, to diversify both geographically and in the types of projects we do,” says Scarso.
In terms of its investment strategy, Argillander says IPR.VC aims to help its portfolio investees select projects with market appeal and “plan a medium- to long-term strategy, effectively help them grow as a business and aligning with them for a period of time.” That, in turn, allows IPR.VC to “create diversification in [its] portfolio by selecting several different partners,” he says.
In its third round, the execs estimate that the company will be investing in between 60 and 70 projects in total. Argillander explains: “The €120m- €140m amount would be split between five or six partners or slates, each one of them with 10 to 15 projects, so in total it would probably be about 60 to 70 projects, with most falling into the €1m-€5m range.”
BlackBerry came about from a ‘strategic alliances with US studio A24
While a greater proportion of the projects it has backed to date are in the film space, the goal with its current fund is to become more involved in television. Of course, now is a challenging time for television, and Argillander concedes that the market is “not in ideal shape.” But these shifts are also creating new opportunities.
“Our task is to find places in the market where there are upsides. For example, we are seeing that streamer greenlights have decreased and they are moving, in some cases, to acquiring ready-made products for certain specific market areas,” he says. “That also brings new demands of financing production as the streamers are stepping in later in the process, which is a good development for us.”
Of course, finding a sweet spot on per-project budgets is also a major consideration for every production, especially at a time when many buyers are pulling back. In terms of risk, Argillander says IPR.VC is more interested in low-to-mid budget projects on the TV side. “When they are very successful, they can achieve multiples [of the initial investment], while big-budget projects have a starting assumption that they should be selling to most of the world already, so the upside can be more limited,” he says.
One obvious but important key, adds Scarso, is to align with companies that have a track record of success. For individual projects, he says, the market is “still quite binary” – with big hits and flops and not a great deal in between. “But then again, a few companies always come out on top and, for us, the challenge is to keep finding those relationships with companies that are able to navigate the market better than others.”
While traditional film and television remain IPR.VC’s core area of focus, the company is also keeping a close eye on the creator economy, which has started to intertwine with the traditional business through high-profile deals between MrBeast and Amazon and a recent deal between UK YouTube group The Sidemen and Netflix.
Argillander would not be drawn on what IPR.VC’s specific plans are – he says the company is in “stealth mode” with its creator-economy strategy – but notes that it is hoping to make moves. “We see many interesting things happening in the creator economy and we believe that in the long run it will be part of this big film and television business, and that it will also be part of our investment focus,” he says.
Scarso also says the company will broaden its focus to include the creator economy in the years ahead, but for now says IPR.VC is laser-focused on building out its slate financing portfolio for its current fund.
“We strongly believe in the strategy we’re undertaking for the current fund,” he says. “But also, as a company and fund manager, we want to grow and investigate other segments of the media industry, IP and content creation that will become part of our investment strategy in the future.”
