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.