Molten Ventures Regulatory News (GROW)

24 July 2019

Draper Esprit plc

("Draper Esprit" or the "Company")

 AGM Trading Statement

Draper Esprit (LSE: GROW, Euronext Growth: GRW), a leading venture capital firm investing in and developing high growth digital technology businesses, will host its Annual General Meeting at 11.00 am this morning.

Karen Slatford, Chairman, comments:

"The year ended 31 March 2019 was transformational for the Company, and in the first four months of the current year we have continued to build on our positive momentum with strong progress across the portfolio.

Since 1 April 2019, the Company has invested £22.0 million across 6 portfolio companies and a further £6.5 million from our EIS/VCT funds. This includes a further investment of €7 million (£6.3 million) alongside Earlybird Digital West ("Earlybird") into Berlin-headquartered digital banking company N26 as part of its recently announced $170 million round (which follows a previously announced €5 million (£4.3 million) investment alongside Earlybird before the year-end). This latest funding round will enable the neobank to launch into the US market. The Company also invested a further £2.2 million into machine learning business Realeyes, which measures emotions through facial recognition technology, and €2.5m (£2.2 million) in Aiven, a cloud technology company developing a portfolio of database-as-a-service products, alongside Earlybird Digital West.

As part of our fund of funds strategy, the Company invested in the first closing of Adara Ventures' third fund, Adara Ventures III. Based in Spain, Adara Ventures is an established venture capital firm with a focus on deep tech companies.

Including the previously announced partial realisation of Transferwise, the Company has generated a total of £21.7m of realisations since the year-end 31 March 2019, including escrows. The Company has sufficient investment capacity for the coming year with cash resources of £47.9m and an additional undrawn £50.0 million revolving credit facility.

It remains vital for Europe's economic and social health that the best technology ideas are supported with capital and advice. As one of the most active VCs within Europe, we are committed to playing a vital role in this, providing privately owned, high-growth companies with the capital, guidance and support they need in order to realise their global growth ambitions.

The European venture capital market is maturing and companies are seeing increased opportunities to gain access to larger pools of capital as they seek to stay private for longer, but more needs to be done in order to ensure that Europe can compete on an international level with the US, China and other markets.

Our disciplined approach to investing, the growth and scale within our portfolio and our business continue enabling us to play a role of continuing significance in the development of the European venture capital market, while delivering long-term, sustainable returns for our shareholders. We therefore look forward to the future with confidence and optimism."

-ENDS-

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