28 Jul 2021 12:00
Strategy/Company/Operations UpdateThe Board of Oxford Technology 3 VCT Plc (OT3) is pleased to provide an update ahead of discussions at the forthcoming shareholders events. The first takes place at 2pm today in Oxford and the second one, a webinar, will be at 10.30am on Thursday 12 August (details below). No additional price sensitive information will be shared during these forums.
The Chairman’s Statement in the Annual Report noted that: “We continue to believe your VCT is an appropriate structure to hold your Company’s investments, but as we have often stated, it would be preferable to have a larger asset base to share the operating costs. Shareholders will be aware that for a number of years, we have sought to find a partner interested in using the existing VCT structure to launch its own share offering, and hence enabling us to expand our asset base, and further efforts have continued in the last few months in this regard. We have had detailed conversations with many other prospective parties who are potentially interested in entering the VCT industry, but to date, we have not been able to find common ground. This is because either the costs of such a launch present too high a risk for other parties to make such a move, or the Directors do not consider the terms on which they wish to take over the management of the VCT would be in existing shareholders’ best interests. However we continue to keep this under review.”
The Board can now report that we are in active discussions with a party who could provide the opportunity we have been seeking. This party, whose identity is currently confidential, would be a good partner to work with and would look to raise funds in a new share class. This is consistent with the Board’s stated aim to seek to increase the Company’s net assets, to enable the running costs to be shared more widely and to create fund longevity for those shareholders with deferred capital gains.
As separately announced by Oxford Technology 2 VCT Plc (OT2) today:
“In addition, consideration is also being given to the merits of one of more of the other OT VCTs merging with OT2 (using a scheme of arrangement that will preserve existing shareholders tax benefits). Any such merged funds would be into separate share classes of OT2 to ensure shareholders suffer no dilution of their individual portfolio holdings.
Any fund raise (and merger if applicable) is subject to the OT2 Board agreeing acceptable terms with one of the two parties, as well as OT2 shareholder agreement at a separate EGM. Furthermore, in the case of any merger, it is also subject to approval by the Boards of any OT fund to be merged, as well as approval of that VCT’s shareholders.”
The Board of OT3 is also actively involved in these possible merger discussions, which would provide OT3 with another opportunity to join a VCT that was actively fund raising.
We will update shareholders if and when any of these discussions reach a conclusion, and in any event, shareholder approval would then be required before any transaction could proceed.
As stated previously, there is no certainty that any of the above options will conclude. However, we are keen to explore these concepts with shareholders so that we can try to ensure that any route selected by the Board(s) is likely to be met with shareholder approval were it to be sought. In any event we will be seeking shareholder approval at the AGM for the continuation of the VCT.
Both shareholder informal forums will include a presentation from OTM followed by a shareholder Q&A to include future strategy. There will be selected investee video presentations. Details for how to register for the webinar is on the website: www.oxfordtechnologyvct.com.
No dates have been determined yet for any general meetings required to actually give effect to any of the above potential proposals. For more information, please contact Robin Goodfellow, the Chairman, by emailing vcts@oxfordtechnology.com
This announcement contains inside information as stipulated under the UK version of the Market Abuse Regulation No 596/2014 which is part of English Law by virtue of the European (Withdrawal) Act 2018, as amended. Upon the publication of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service, this information is now considered to be in the public domain.