Draper Espirit raises portfolio to £107m

Draper Espirit, an AIM-listed venture capital firm, recorded a gross primary portfolio value of £106.9m, an increase of £28.1m since its initial public offering (IPO), including new investments of £6.8m in the six months ended 30 September 2016.

Revenue from trading activities including secondary and Enterprise Investment Schemes (EIS) funds was £0.7m.

The group’s profit after tax was £26.1m in the first half. Net assets including goodwill increased by 11% to £143.3m and Net Asset Value (NAV) per share was 352p.

Current net cash and deposits available for investment was £48m.

The group acquired a minority stake in Elderstreet Investments post-period end as well as an option to acquire remaining equity. This added £25m of Assets Under Management (AuM), with total group venture capital AuM of around £350m.

The company has invested £8.9m and a further £6.2m was invested by co-investment funds, including Lifesum, Graphcore, Resolver and post-period Pushdoctor and Perkbox.

Disposals generated a total of £39m, with Movidius worth £27.4m and post-period Qosmos was worth £8m and Datahug £3.6m.

Ben Wilkinson was also appointed as chief financial officer in October, strengthening the team and taking the total number of investment professionals to 10 including Elderstreet, according to the board.

Chief executive Simon Cook, CEO Draper Esprit commented: "We have continued to experience strong deal-flow and have invested over £17m in the year to date into new and existing technology companies, across the UK and Europe. Our plc portfolio companies now have a combined turnover in excess of $710m, growing nearly 30% on 2015. We believe that we are well-positioned to capitalise further on opportunities in the second half of the year and look forward to the next financial year with confidence and optimism."

The share price rose 1.41% to 360p at 1527 GMT on Monday.