Molten Ventures Plc

I'm Martin Davis and I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Draper Street PLC. We're a listed venture capital business and we operate across Europe in the high-tech space.

It's been a year of strong performance across all of our metrics, despite the uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the start of the year, gross portfolio value increased by 281 million to 984 million. This was following realizations of 206 million, which were ahead of our investment in the period of 128 million. Fair value growth in the period was 360 million, which was a 51% increase on the opening gross portfolio value, reflecting strong performance across the portfolio, particularly with IPOs of UiPath and with Trustpilot, but also from capital raises across the portfolio at higher valuations. Net portfolio value increased in the period by 210 million to 867 million and that's taking account of accruals for carry and deferred taxes. Our year-end net asset value was over a billion pounds based on the strong performance from the portfolio and also our year-end cash position which reflects an equity raise in the period and also strong realisations. We see further investment opportunities coming from our deep network across Europe and we anticipate this will allow us to increase our investment cadence to over £150 million for the coming year.

2021 was really a year of two halves, and indeed it was my first full year as Chief Executive of Draper Esprit. In the first half, as we went into the pandemic, we spent our time getting close to our portfolio companies, making sure that our staff was safe and that we were able to operate in this new world that we were in. The second half of the first half of the last summer, we used that time to be able to prepare ourselves for what we were expecting to be a rapid acceleration of digitization once the pandemic passed. And so we looked at systems, processes, we brought on new staff, and we enabled the business to scale so that we are much more effective. The second half of the year was really very different. The expectation around the acceleration of digitization, the greater uptake of technology, more online, more e-commerce, more remote working, that led to great opportunity within the companies that we invest in. we decided to go back to the market last autumn and to raise additional equity. We raised 110 million, which we were able to deploy both into primary deals, but also, and more importantly, into secondary deals and into our portfolios, and enabled us to follow on some of the great companies that we already invest in. Last year, we also took the opportunity to increase our commitment to the seed funder funds program. We invested in an extra 15 funds that take us to 35. The accelerated pace of change continued into the new financial year, and that enabled us to invest in great companies such as MANA, FintechOS, and Cervest. We've also taken the opportunity to commit an extra 75 million into another phase of our funder funds program.

We recognize the importance of ESG across all levels, and this has led us to approve at the board our own ESG policy, which includes portfolio due diligence checklists, also portfolio targets for the companies themselves to help them on that journey. We're training our investment team. We've also mapped our portfolio to UN sustainable development goals, and we've had our first year of reporting under UN PRI. We continue on our journey in the new financial year with carbon balancing and also the TCFD roadmap plus diversity projects.

This new market environment has been exceptionally good for the companies that we invest in. Indeed, there are more unicorns created in the first quarter of this year than in the entire years for the last two to three years. We believe we're very well positioned in this new environment. We have a flexible capital raising platform. We have a very strong and disciplined investment process that is tried and tested over many years. We have access to the most exciting companies through our seed fund to funds program. And we also have the ability to make follow on investments through our very strong portfolio. So we look to the future with a great deal of optimism. We have a very robust model that can enable us to deliver results through all market conditions, as we've seen over the last 12 months. We can deliver 20% fair value growth year on year, and we believe that we can continue to do that throughout the cycle. Given our dramatic growth last year, our target for the coming financial year will be 15%. Being an AIM listed company has served the business very well over the last five years since flotation, and has enabled us to build a foundation and to scale the business to where we are today. However, with the growth opportunity that we have and our ambition, we believe that it makes sense for us to have a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange main market. And that's what we will be filing for over the coming months.