Molten Ventures Regulatory News (GROW)

22 May 2019

Draper Esprit plc

("Draper Esprit", "the Group" or the "Company")

PORTFOLIO COMPANY UPDATES

Draper Esprit (LSE: GROW, Euronext Growth: GRW), a leading venture capital firm investing in and developing high growth digital technology businesses, provides the following update on three of its portfolio companies.

Transferwise

Draper Esprit notes today's announcement from TransferWise, the international money transfer platform, following its successful $292.0 million share sale at a $3.5 billion valuation.

Draper Esprit originally acquired a stake in TransferWise as part of the acquisition of Seedcamp Funds I and II, which were acquired for £17.9 million in October 2017. The fair value of TransferWise in Draper Esprit's Gross Portfolio has since increased from £13.1 million as at 30 September 2018 to £27.7 million as at 31 March 2019. 

Following today's share sale, Draper Esprit has now sold part of its stake in Transferwise, although the company remains a core portfolio holding with a remaining fair value of over £12.0 million. Draper Esprit has now generated £18.1 million in cash from Seedcamp I and II, both from TransferWise and the sale of three other companies from the Seedcamp portfolio. This exceeds the original £17.9m initial investment for those portfolios within 18 months. The remaining stakes in Seedcamp I and II are currently valued above the original cost.

Co-founded by Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann, TransferWise launched in 2011 and is now one of the world's fastest growing payment firms. Today, over five million people use TransferWise which processes over £4bn in payments every month, saving customers over £1bn a year.

UiPath

Leading robotic process automation (RPA) software company UiPath recently announced it has closed a Series D investment round raising $568 million at a post-money valuation of $7 billion. This latest round makes UiPath one of the fastest growing and highest-valued AI enterprise software companies worldwide. The investment round was led by Coatue and joined by Dragoneer, Wellington and Sands Capital.

In January 2019, Draper Esprit acquired an underlying holding in UiPath as part of its relationship with Earlybird, when the Group acquired a 5 per cent. interest in Earlybird Digital East Fund I ("DEF") for $20 million. At this time, UiPath was valued at $3 billion (on the basis of their previous funding round in September 2018), and made up 85% of the DEF valuation. The fair value of UiPath in Draper Esprit's Gross Portfolio at 31 March 2019 is now over £30.0 million.

UiPath is leading the "automation first" era, championing one robot for every person, delivering free and open training and collaboration and enabling robots to learn new skills through AI and machine learning. UiPath's enterprise RPA platform has already automated millions of repetitive tasks for business and government all over the world, improving productivity, customer experience and employee job satisfaction.

Perkbox

Perkbox recently announced £13.5 million in equity funding to support worldwide expansion plans for its employee experience platform. Draper Esprit led the round alongside long-term Perkbox angel investors.

Launched in 2015, Perkbox is a platform designed to provide a unique employee experience, enriching the personal and working life of employees. The funding will help finance part of the company's expansion operations in recently launched markets while also helping to scale the development and distribution of Perkbox's new products - Perkbox Medical, Perkbox Insights and the platform's card-linked PerksGO feature, all launched in Q4 2018.

Final Results for the year ended 31 March 2019

The board remains confident that the Company is on track to meet its NAV growth expectations for the full year ending March 2019 and will release results on June 4th 2019.

Simon Cook, CEO at Draper Esprit, commented:

"Having first invested in TransferWise in 2017, we are delighted to continue our support as they embark on the next stage of their development, while simultaneously recognising the opportunity to create value for our shareholders. The fact that we have already realised the original sum we invested in the Seedcamp portfolio is an important vindication of our strategy and underlines our sustainable investment model. The transaction indicates a maturing European ecosystem, where opportunities for liquidity via secondary markets are growing

"UiPath and Perkbox's successful fundraisings underline the strength and depth of our portfolio. Although both businesses operate in very distinct areas, both are true innovators in their respective markets with significant growth potential. We are delighted to support both firms as part of their ongoing development."

-ENDs-

Enquiries