YOLO Leisure reveals growth in income and net assets

Full year results from YOLO Leisure & Technology showed positive investment income as the company plans to raise further funds in the new year.

Finishing its trading year to end-September with five companies in its portfolio, the AIM-listed investment company generated total comprehensive income of £0.73m versus the loss of £0.62m last year. The income resulted from unrealised gains on investments of £0.66m and realised gains on disposal of investments of £0.27m.

Cash of £0.62m rested in the bank at the year-end, helped by a £2.5m fundraising in November last year at a price of 1p.

As at 30 September, gross assets were £4.6m and total net assets stood at £4.5m, representing 1.02p per share - up from 0.68p a year ago.

YOLO, which as Pentagon Protection in 2014 sold off its last business assets and became a cash shell before adopting its current investment company guise with the purchase of shares in Gfinity later that year, saw its shares sink to an all-time low of 0.42p earlier this week. But Friday's results lifted them to the heady heights of 0.62p, before settling at 0.50p by the early close at 1230 GMT.

YOLO's five portfolio companies includes two fellow AIM-listed companies: Gfinity, the e-sports events organiser, and AudioBoom, the podcast technology platform.

Three other investments are in TVPlayer, a UK online livestreaming TV platform; Simplestream, a provider of video services for the media and entertainment industry from which TVplayer was a spin-out; and Magic Media Works, a music entertainment technology business.

Highlights of the portfolio in the year include Magic Media Works's recent launch of its ROXI device and a recent £1.46m funding round, in which YOLO did not invest but saw Henrik Holmark, former finance director of Pandora Jewellery, invest £650,000 and join the MMW board as a non-executive director.

TVPlayer's reported 1m monthly active users and 40,000 paying subscribers on its platform in November, with 15%-plus growth per month. The firm raised £2.2m earlier this month.

Looking forward, TVPlayer expects to raise further funds in early 2018 to upgrade the platform, licence new content and support subscriber growth through marketing.

Simplestream is planning to open a US office in the second quarter of net year with a view to doubling revenues in the next two years.

Simon Robinson, CEO of YOLO, said: "Yolo is well positioned as an investment company to actively grow its portfolio in 2018. Our purpose is to identify innovative businesses that meet our investment criteria and have significant potential to deliver value for our shareholders."