Member Info for W13Ken

Another admission to the FTSE 250 is Draper Esprit, a venture capital firm which focuses on high-growth technology businesses.

Its market cap is more than £1.6bn after it transitioned to the premium listing segment of the London Stock Exchange from the AIM. It is also on the secondary listing segment of Euronext Dublin.

Since its IPO in 2016, Draper Esprit has deployed around £550m capital and has a current annual rate of deployment of about £200m, making it one of the most active venture capital firms in Europe.

It is a shareholder in a diverse portfolio of 71 companies, including Graphcore, UiPath, Trustpilot, Aiven, Ledger, Lyst and Cazoo.

https://businesscloud.co.uk/darktrace-to-join-ftse-250-as-valuation-rockets-following-ipo/

The latest by my calculations:
* £78.3m banked so far in March 2021
* 7.9% retained of 1.88billion (1 Sept valuation) = £148.5m.
I make that about £227m from their initial £29.7m investment!
They should be able to sell that 7.9% later this month when the 6-month tie-in expires and I believe that they will realise at least some of this investment prior to the H1 results coming out, in the way that they sold some prior to the FY results being released. Given Trustpilot's continued climb they may choose to sell off every 6 months prior to half-yearly results.

...based on Wednesday's close. Never in much doubt but it will be interesting to see the effect it has, if we didn't already see signs of that this week. We can certainly expect to be featured in more financial news stories and, I hope, that there will be profiles written that introduce GROW to a wider audience and summarise its amazing potential. Have pension funds and trackers been able to buy in before now? Maybe not.

Hold on to your hats :-)

"Companies that were promoted to the FTSE 250 were: Endeavour Mining, Darktrace, Bridgepoint, Blackrock Throgmorton Trust, Draper Esprit and Baltic Classifieds."

Another GROW Unicorn and Revolut gets a mention too...

https://news.sky.com/story/banking-tech-provider-thoughtmachine-lands-unicorn-status-with-new-funding-12396642

https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/01/coachhub-raises-80m-in-series-b2-round-as-coaching-goes-digital-in-the-pandemic/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

In the 1100s on the first day of the month :-)

Nearer 1200 at the end?

Great update Steph, appreciate your insight and share your optimism. I think it's great to see the financial and economic insight from you and sage (although they have been quiet recently) and the board is generally a good, non-rampy source of interesting info.

One holding that we haven't heard to much about recently is Ledger, the French company that provides a secure solution for crypto passwords. There was news that they were planning to float soon so there could be more on that in the next month.

I mentioned a few other shares a fortnight ago. Accesso technology is up 15% since then and 30% in the last month and K3 Capital has an 'exceptionally strong' H1 results out in just a few weeks. DYOR of course.

We can expect an increased volume of positive news in September and I can't see how we can finish the month at less than 1100p.

...but not till December...

I agree that they write weird articles but if you compare the sp of 4th Jan (550p) rather than 26th Jan it is up 68.95%.

The recent price drop was irrational so I topped up for as low as 789p in my Trading account. There's been a new director appointment announced today which has gone down very well. The sister US share RNLX is up over 11% today so there should be a decent rise this week.

https://investors.renalytix.com/news-releases/news-release-details/renalytix-appoints-daniel-j-levangie-its-board-directors

"Renalytix (NASDAQ:RNLX) shares are up around 69% since the beginning of the year. Analysts on Wall Street and beyond think it can go a whole lot higher, too. The consensus price target for Renalytix suggests a 30% gain over recent prices.

Shares of Renalytix have been soaring because it looks as if its chronic-kidney-disease test, KidneyIntelX, can rapidly expand into its healthcare niche. The test employs machine learning techniques to predict which chronic-kidney-disease patients are most likely to progress.

Pricy treatment can prevent bad kidneys from getting worse, but not everyone needs costly intervention to keep off a transplant waiting list. Renalytix recently published results of a budget impact analysis that suggests healthcare plan sponsors can save around $220 per chronic-kidney-disease patient per year by monitoring patients with KidneyIntelX instead of just standard kidney failure detection methods.

According to the CDC, around 37 million Americans have chronic kidney disease. With hard data that proves it can lower America's enormous healthcare bills, a large portion of this group could end up receiving KidneyIntelX tests on a regular basis."

https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/08/30/3-growth-stocks-that-could-soar-or-more-according/

Draper perhaps investing at Slush, Helsinki...

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/slush-tech-startup-event-helsinki-covid

"and venture capital firm Draper Esprit will receive approx $80M in cash from the transaction proceeds."

https://siliconcanals.com/news/cazoo-debuts-on-nyse-raises-1b/

Aha - I see it now. Report was updated 4 hours ago. Pretty sure that wasn't there this morning :-)

Much better than I thought then and I agree that there will be a Sept lift for this, FTSE entry and upcoming results.

Interesting. Where's your source?

"Will Turner, growth fund managing partner at Draper Esprit, said on the day of the flotation: ‘Our ethos is to back serial entrepreneurs time and again, which is why it’s incredibly satisfying to see Cazoo enter the public markets today.

‘We backed Alex Chesterman in his first breakout success, LoveFilm, and invested in Cazoo in no small part because we think he’s a rock star operator – one of the best of his breed in Europe."

Draper Esprit CEO Martin Davis said: ‘As a listed venture capital firm, we are especially delighted to see our portfolio companies list themselves and we offer our congratulations to Cazoo Group today.

Cazoo was a bright star from the moment it incorporated and it is testament to the depth of our network, the foresight of our Fund of Funds programme and our listed model that we are able to support Cazoo’s stellar growth trajectory."

https://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/cazoo-shares-rise-by-nearly-eight-per-cent-on-first-day-of-trading/232360

Draper were quite late to the game with Cazoo by their standards, investing £10.3m in June 2020. In the annual report in June this year the fair value dated 31st March 2021 had risen to £25.7m, which should have gone up to approx £30m now. A great turnaround but not of the scale of Trustpilot or UIPath. I wouldn't expect there to be a tie-in period as a Series C investor but GROW are sitting on a large cash pile already and could potentially free up a lot of invested money in September from sales of 1 to 3 of the above. What with that, the official FTSE 250 admission and H1 results expect September to be a very interesting month.

https://www.cityam.com/next-chapter-starts-for-cazoo-as-firm-lists-via-new-york-spac/

There's been a 20% rise in under 2 weeks as investors are waking up to the potential with accesso technology. US ii's Long Path Partners have built their stake to 13.29% of all shares so have understood the vision, probably having met Steve Brown on a number of occasions.

I'm still expecting further gains up to and around the H1 results on Sept 14th. Simply Wall Street has fair value set as 1229p.

I'm very confident that K3C will hit 400p in the next month with FY figures being released in late Sept. Nothing but good news from them and their subsiduary Quantuma (although it's usuallh referred to as a merger).

"Due to heightened demand, corporate turnaround consultancy Quantuma has grown its team by 45% over the last year. The news coincides with its appointment of Brian Burke as a Managing Director.

While Quantuma has significantly diversified its offering in recent years to include aspects such as pensions and corporate finance advisory, the firm is still best known for its work helping clients under financial stress. Amid the unique crisis presented by the last 18 months of pandemic chaos, this meant the firm was positioned to pick up a heightened workload, during and after the lockdown.

In order to cope with rising demand, the firm committed to a hiring campaign that has seen it boost its headcount by 45%. Welcoming in a net gain of 85 new staff, the firm took its team from 188 to 273 professionals – also using acquisitions to more rapidly grow its team. Since its merger with K3 Capital Group, Quantuma has completed several lucrative deals in the last 12 months. In the first quarter of 2021..."
https://www.consultancy.uk/news/28806/quantuma-grows-headcount-by-45-in-12-months

"CAE Australia has been awarded a contract by CASG to upgrade the RAAF's three Hawk Mk127 full-mission simulators with the innovative Crew Training System developed by Seeing Machines.

CAE Australia and Seeing Machines will collaborate to install and integrate the Crew Training System that features precision eye-tracking technology on the CAE-built Hawk Mk127 full-mission simulators used as part of the RAAF’s lead-in fighter training program.

The eye-tracking technology improves aircrew training by providing objective insights and detailed data on where pilots are looking during training scenarios in the simulator.

CAE Australia, Seeing Machines and the RAAF proved the effectiveness of the eye-tracking capabilities over the past year during a research and development program where the Crew Training System was installed on one of the Hawk Mk127 full-mission simulators for 78 Wing at RAAF Williamtown..."

https://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/cae-australia-to-upgrade-raaf-hawk-full-mission-simulators