Investor drastically slashes value of its Canva shares price

Canva is the ultimate Aussie success story but one investor thinks the company is significantly overvalued, chopping 33 per cent off its share price.

Australian graphics design company Canva has soared to new heights in recent years but there’s now a slight blip on its track record.

Last September, the Aussie business was valued at a staggering $54.5 billion.

The impressive figure meant the unicorn had more than doubled its worth since April 2021, when it was valued at an estimated $19 billion.

But now, one prominent investor appears to think the tech company is overvalued by a third of its price.

In Canva’s latest round of venture capital raising, Franklin Templeton’s Growth Opportunities Fund purchased thousands of shares in the company but drastically slashed their prices.

According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Franklin Templeton reduced the cost of its 11,829 shares from $28.2 million to $18.7 million.

Overall, that represents a drop of 33.5 per cent – roughly one-third.

Using that same logic, Franklin Templeton thinks Canva might be worth a third less than its current value, effectively valuing the $54.5 billion company at around $37 billion. That means the company has shed around $18 billion if that was the case.

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A Canva spokesman said the company was not concerned by the news and that they are still in “a very strong financial position”.

“I can’t speak to the internal decisions and processes of individual investors (we have hundreds of investors), however, we’re certainly confident about our trajectory and that our valuation will continue to grow over the years to come,” the said.

They also added that Canva has generated positive cash flows for the past five financial years, including turning over $US1 billion ($A1.4 billion) in the past year.

In September last year, it was reported that Canva garnered 60 million monthly active users across 190 countries, with over 2000 employees.

The spokesman revealed that as of Tuesday, they have 85 million users, which means they’ve added 25 million customers to their platform in the past eight months.

Melanie Perkins at the Canva office in Surry Hills.

Canva has undergone five venture capital rounds in less than three years.

So far this is the only investor that reduced its investment by such a significant amount, Channel News reported.

Despite being a well-established and successful company, Canva continues to raise venture capital funds.

The Australian Financial Review said the venture capital rounds was so staff could cash out on their stock in the company, and not because they really needed the money.

A Canva spokesman wouldn’t confirm this to news.com.au but said cash flow was not an issue as they had $US700 million ($A970 million) of pure cash in the bank.

It is a private company and these capital raising rounds are the only chance for investors to jump on board.

Canva founders Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins, who are also married. Source: Max Doyle

Canva began 16 years ago, when Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht were living together as uni students at the age of 19.

Ms Perkins was studying at a Perth university and teaching other students design programs to earn extra cash.

She noticed her students struggling to learn complex graphic design systems like Photoshop and thought there had to be a better way.

Ms Perkins went on to create Canva, an easy-to-use graphics design program that had 60 million customers at the time of writing.

Her then-partner who she married earlier this year, Cliff Obrecht, became a co-founder. Tasmanian software designer Cameron Adams was also brought on board and is the third co-founder of Canva.

Mr Adams has a stake in Canva worth an estimated $6 billion while husband and wife duo Ms Perkins and Mr Obrecht hold a 30 per cent stake, so they now have over $16 billion between them.