VS completes strategic funding round with Notion

17 July 2017

Legendary Investments PLC("Legendary" or the "Company")

VirtualStock Holdings Limited ("VS") completes strategic funding round with Notion Capital ("Notion"), a trading name of The Fund Incubator Limited

Legendary announces that its investee company, VS, has attracted an investment of £4.5m from Notion Capital, a leading European B2B SaaS Venture Capital firm, to support its next phase of growth. The round values VS at £66m.

VS's goal is to transform global B2B supply chains and marketplaces through its ability to seamlessly and rapidly connect systems together. VS's core platform ("The Edge") is already used by leading retailers including Tesco, John Lewis, Sainsbury's, Argos and Dixons Carphone to support their digital and omni-channel strategies. The Edge brings increased transparency and simplicity to a company's supply chain meaning customers can take advantage of the ever-increasing opportunities that an omni-channel environment presents.

As well as the country's leading retailers, VS also counts the leading NHS Trusts amongst its clients. VS also has a partnership with NHS Shared Business Services to bring The Edge to the NHS to help realise up to £1bn of annual savings through transforming the end-to-end procurement process.

Founded in 2009, Notion Capital is a leading European venture capital firm focused on enterprise SaaS and Cloud companies. Notion's partners are best known for founding and building MessageLabs, one of the world's largest SaaS exits at its $700m sale to Symantec in 2008. The firm backs exceptional enterprise software entrepreneurs who Notion believes have the potential to transform large, global markets. Notion has made 45 investments to date.

The investment will enable VS to accelerate its already rapid growth in its core retail and health sectors, and support further expansion into new geographic markets and sectors, establishing the business as a global player enabling its clients to deliver digital supply chain transformation fast.

Following this investment, Legendary's stake in VS is 6.8%.

Andrew Mills, CEO at VirtualStock said: "We are delighted that Notion Capital has chosen to invest in our business as we believe they are the best possible partners for us. Its team brings unique experience having founded and exited MessageLabs and also has built the "Notion Platform" to support their portfolio businesses through a range of value added services.

The investment comes at a very exciting time as we continue to grow our market share in retail and are poised to become the de facto catalogue and procure-to-pay solution within the NHS. We will now be in a position to accelerate our growth, enhance our portfolio of solutions and expand into new markets. We look forward to further investment in our clients, staff and supplier base, including creating further high quality UK tech sector jobs in the M4 'silicon corridor' over the next year."

Stephen Chandler, Managing Partner at Notion Capital said: "Digital supply chain is a hot topic, and for good reason. VirtualStock delivers an agile supply chain technology platform that allows its clients to quickly adapt to the challenges of digitisation without turning to traditional systems integration, thereby reducing cost and risk while accelerating benefits. VirtualStock has already demonstrated this in two important sectors and has accumulated an impressive portfolio of clients. They are now superbly placed to scale rapidly and we believe that they will become another UK technology success story."

Zafar Karim, Executive Chairman of Legendary, said: "We are pleased that Notion has recognised the value and potential of VS. Notion invests in B2B SaaS & Cloud Services companies with high growth potential and global ambition

VS continues to make progress in its core targeted markets. As well as benefitting from the investment by Notion, it will benefit from their experience and expertise. We look forward to continuing to work with VS and Notion to help VS realise its potential."

- ENDS -

About VirtualStock Holdings Limited:

VirtualStock is a leading British SaaS company that aims to transform global enterprise supply chains and marketplaces. Its flagship product The Edge has been successful in delivering supply chain optimisation for leading retailers, the NHS, suppliers and, ultimately, their customers.

The Edge delivers best-in-class eProcurement functionality, including an Amazon-style B2B marketplace, full procure-to-pay (P2P), product information management (PIM), catalogue management, order management, inventory management, e-invoicing, track and trace, and analytics. The platform is GS11 and PEPPOL2 certified.

1 GS1 is an international organisation that develops and maintains supply chain standards in healthcare, retail, transport and logistics and more.

2 PEPPOL (Pan European Public Procurement On-Line) is a system which provides organisations and its suppliers with a standardised connection for eOrdering, eInvoicing, electronic Credit Notes and Advance Shipping Notifications.

www.virtualstock.co.uk

About Notion Capital:

Notion is a venture capital firm focused on high-potential businesses in the Enterprise Cloud Computing and Software-as-as-Service (SaaS) markets. The Notion team has unique expertise and experience in the Cloud Computing market having founded, built and exited two highly successful businesses in the space - Star and MessageLabs. The Notion portfolio includes Currency Cloud, Dealflo, DemystData, GoCardless, MoveGuides, NewVoiceMedia, Triptease and Workable.

www.notioncapital.comwww.notioncapital.com

About Legendary Investments PLC:

Legendary Investments PLC is a proactive investment company that focuses on making investments in and assisting companies which exhibit the potential to generate returns of many multiples through capital appreciation. Typically, Legendary invests in small companies where there are clear catalysts for value appreciation and the companies are operating in sectors exhibiting long term growth. Examples of such sectors include technology, energy and natural resources.

www.leginvest.com 

Disclaimers:

None of the Notion funds referred to herein is open to investment from members of the general public. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance and the value of investments can go up as well as down.

Notion Capital is a trading name of The Fund Incubator Limited - registered in Scotland Co No SC21868. MBM COMMERCIAL, 5th Floor 125 Princes Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH2 4AD. Authorised and Regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.