Member Info for W13Ken

"A vegan meal delivery start-up has secured £38 million in funding to capitalise on the growth in “flexitarians” as people reduce their meat consumption for health and environmental reasons.

The funding for the London-based allplants was led by Draper Esprit, the listed venture capital firm that has invested in Revolut, Cazoo and Trustpilot. It is said to be the biggest ever “series B”, or second round of venture investment, raised by a plant-based food company in Europe."

Meeting postponed. It didn't make sense for it to be before the results were released. Should be near 1st Nov now.

"Please be advised that due to unforeseen circumstances K3 CAPITAL GROUP PLC has had to cancel the meeting Preliminary Results Presentation scheduled for 19th Oct 2021 at 4:45pm BST. A further presentation invitation will be issued in due course.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

There's a good interview this werk with CEO, John Rigby, that virtually no-one has watched. but these FY results will bring attention to K3C that it hasn't seen before.

https://youtu.be/9Tqcj-q7kro

We have a results release date at last and it's 1st November. As expected, there's an indication that the results are very strong so expect the share price to pick up signifucantly from here.

"Following a review of the Company's accounting policies, the Board now expects the Group's revenue and adjusted EBITDA* for the year ended 31 May 2021 to be ahead of the numbers announced in the trading update on 15 June 2021 which stated revenue of c.£46m and adjusted EBITDA* of not less than £14.25m."

It should definitely be higher ORuin but has taken a bit of a knock recently. I'm going for 800 to 850.

Sky News understands that Ravelin, which counts companies including Deliveroo and Booking.com among its clients, is working with Evercore on a potential transaction.

Tech industry sources said a sale was among the options being explored by Ravelin.

Set up in 2014, Ravelin uses machine learning to help its users detect fraud when processing online payments.

https://news.sky.com/story/fraud-detection-technology-firm-ravelin-hires-bankers-to-explore-sale-12431273

Topped up in Trading at 910p. I don't think it will drop much below 900p, if at all, with the NAV support.

We should receive an RNS soon to confirm the FY results release as there's an Investor Meet presentation next week.

Investor Meet Preliminary Results Presentation: 19th Oct 2021 at 4:45pm BST.

Thanks Steph, I hope there have been some sales this week.

This latest investment doesn't seem to be that high-tech a concept to buy into but appears to be a fast-growing market.

Draper Esprit is delighted to lead the $50 million Series A round investment in construction tech startup, Schüttflix. Also joining the round is the founding team surrounding co-funding investor Thomas Hagedorn and CEO Christian Hülsewig, as well as HV Capital, Speedinvest and STRABAG.

Schüttflix is the first logistics hub for the construction bulk-materials industry that works digitally and supplies sand, gravel and grit on the spot. The Schüttflix app connects suppliers and carriers directly with customers from the road construction, civil engineering, gardening and landscaping sectors. For the first time, Schüttflix is transforming the regionally fragmented and non-transparent market for all customary construction bulk materials into an efficient, Germany-wide market.

The company plans to use the new capital to drive its planned expansion into the Austrian, Polish and Czech markets in 2022. Schüttflix also plans to use the funding to continue developing digital products and services for all aspects of construction-site supply and waste disposal in the coming months, and is relying on strong strategic partnerships, such as with STRABAG to achieve this.

https://draperesprit.com/news/draper-esprit-leads-50m-series-a-in-construction-tech-startup-schuttflix

Presumably we'll get news of some cashing in of Cazoo/Trustpilot/UIPath tomorrow as it will be the last day of H1.

It's definitely down to you :-)

Fingers crossed Steph. I think I'll close my trade at 1180ish when it gets up there again but will remain a long-term holder in the ISA.

Off-topic but re K3 Capital (as you now have some), I've written a couple of updates that summarise what they have been up to in the last year and why I have high hopes for their upcoming results.

K3C cannot stay under the radar for much longer and I think the results in the next few weeks will bring them a lot more attention. Interestingly, Duff & Phelps - who runs businesses of the same type as K3C - were bought for $4.4bn by Stone Point in January this year. K3C Market is just £260m. DYOR and good luck.

"As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to push the global economy into a sustained recession, Quantuma is only the latest in a string of consultancies specialising in insolvency and corporate recovery services to attract backing. The likelihood of heightened business for the restructuring consulting segment was recently illustrated by a consortium of investors led by Stone Point Capital and Further Global, who were willing to sink an estimated $4.2 billion into the purchase of Duff & Phelps."

https://www.consultancy.uk/news/25233/quantuma-agrees-27-million-merger-with-k3-capital-group

K3C's Annual results will be released in late October rather than late September this year due to its "transformational year".

I decided to look back at what has occurred since that financial year started in June 2020 and it's true there has been a huge amount of activity and acquisitions. As per their website: "The acquisitions are in line with K3’s strategy to acquire complementary and value accretive businesses to build out its existing SME focussed service lines."

* Aug 2020: Acquisition of Quantuma (restructuring and insolvency, corporate finance, forensic accounting and investigations) for £27m, immediately earning enhancing.
* Sep 2020: Acquisition of rannd (helps businesses to secure R&D tax credits from the government in return for a percentage of the amount achieved)
* Feb 2021: Launch of K3 Hub, a new member network for intermediaries that offers a single point of contact for K3C's many subsidiary companies.
* Mar 2021: Forecast upgrade of EBITDA of no less than £12 million. Acquisition of inTax (leading tax investigations team is comprised of Chartered Tax Advisers and former HMRC Inspectors) and Aspect Plus (Insolvency Practioners).
* Apr 2021: Another Forecast upgrade: Revenue expected to be in the region of £45 million and Adjusted EBITDA* of no less than £13.25 million.
* Jun 2021: Revenues approximately £46.0 million and adjusted EBITDA* of not less than £14.25 million
Post Year-end:
* Jul 2021: Acquisition of Knight R&D (specialist research and development (R&D) tax advisory firm servicing UK SMEs)
* Jul 2021: Acquisition of Knight Corporate Finance Group (specialist M&A advisory firm within the telecoms and tech sector)

I'm forecasting a large sale of Trustpilot by the end of next week as the 180 day tie-in period looks to have expired. It has dropped a bit but will still return a huge markup on the initial investment.

Trustpilot IPO announcement on 23rd March:

The Company's total investment to date has been £29.7 million and as of our interim results to 30 September 2020 our holding was valued at £80.9 million. As part of the IPO, the Company will be selling down part of its holding, resulting in proceeds of £78.3 million. The Company will continue to hold 7.9% in shares amounting to £85.5 million (subject to any exercise of the overallotment option during the period to admission) based on the Trustpilot share price on 23 March 2021. The Company's continued holding will be subject to a customary 180-day lock-up period from the date of admission in line with other institutional investors in Trustpilot.

Another positive surprise. Many of the companies in GROW's portfolio are getting big wins.

"JP Morgan has selected UK fintech Thought Machine to overhaul its core banking systems across the banking giant’s entire US retail network.

The partnership will see JP Morgan’s Chase retail bank moved onto Thought Machine’s Vault platform in the US.

AltFi understands Thought Machine is also doing some work for JP Morgan on the recent launch of Chase in the UK.

It’s another big client win for Thought Machine, which in the last few months has provided the core banking for Standard Chartered launching its digital bank Mox in Hong Kong, and Sweden’s SEB launching UNQUO—a banking service for SMEs and entrepreneurs.

“JPMorgan Chase represents one of the most ambitious, powerful financial institutions in the world—and our joint work signals to the finance industry that cloud native core banking technology is the future for financial services,” said Thought Machine CEO and founder Paul Taylor.

https://www.altfi.com/article/8343_thought-machine-scores-jp-morgan-chase-as-its-latest-cloud-banking-client

"...Berenberg said Draper Esprit, which it selected as a top pick for 2021, had "not disappointed" thus far, yielding a return of 65% year-to-date and outperforming the FTSE 250 by 53% and the US and European tech indices by around 45% and 37%, respectively.

The German bank also highlighted that since June, markets had pushed on as valuations continue to expand in the technology sector, noting that this, combined with some new investment updates, gives it confidence that the company will outperform prior estimates with more capital deployed and the company achieving higher uplifts to its portfolio fair value..."

https://www.sharecast.com/news/broker-recommendations/berenberg-raises-target-price-on-draper-esprit--8111822.html

BERENBERG RAISES DRAPER ESPRIT PRICE TARGET TO 1,200 (1,000) PENCE - 'BUY'

I wrote to K3C this morning about results and meeting dates and received a quick response from the CFO. Seems reasonable given the circumstances and I'm still confident that it will be worth waiting for.

"Given our transformational year through acquisitions in FY21, we decided to go out with our results 4 weeks later this year – purely in order to ensure we had appropriate time with the audit and also preparing a meaningful annual report as it will be quite a deviation this year due to our numerous revenue streams.

We will make an announcement on dates in the coming week or so but are aiming for late October. I expect we will continue with our investor meets company presentations, so look forward to updating you in due course."

K3 Capital play their cards pretty close to their chest when it comes to forthcoming updates but last year's Final Results were released on 22nd September. Last year they also held an Investor presentation on 24th September.

I hope and expect that we should hear some news in the next week.