Ip Group (LSE:IPO) — Half Year Results

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the IP Group PLC Half Year Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet company platform. Before we begin, as usual, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from IP GROUP PLC. Greg, good morning, sir. Good morning, and thank you, Jake. And as always, thanks to everyone at Investor Me Company for, again, hosting our half year results webinar.

0:51 I was reflecting a bit I was I was reading my Feet on Saturday, and and I almost choked my yogurt. I guess these days, I've sort of had to move on from cornflakes for longevity reasons, but I I saw the headline. The US market for IPOs has exploded back to life with the busiest week for four years, and and that's not something I've seen for a few years, I guess, you know, maybe obviously based on the title. But it was an interesting reflection that the public markets have had quite a positive impact on the portfolio in more than ways than one so far in 2025, and, hopefully, there is more opportunity that arises for us in in future as a result. I'm Greg Smith. And as CEO, I have the honor of leading IP GROUP and our excellent team on our mission to accelerate the power of science for a better future.

1:45 And with me on today's call, we have our managing partner, Mark Reilly, and our CFO, Dave Baines, both in the in the room really and and virtually. As usual, this presentation will be uploaded onto the IR section of our website with a few appendices. Before we start, please note all the usual disclaimers. If you can read that in the time I'm gonna spend on the slide, then and good luck. But this covers all the information and particularly any forward looking statements that we may make during the course of the next hour or so. So in terms of what we're going to cover, I'll provide an overview of the group performance in the first half, then I'll pass on to Mark, and he'll give an update on a number of our key balance sheet holdings and then some other notable development, actually. And then Dave's gonna run us through a summary of the numbers, and then we'll head into q and a. As Jake said, as always, please post your questions up in the q and a section.

2:45 And as always, we'll endeavor to cover them all either live in the session or afterwards via platform if we run out of time. So for the half year, I think the main message is, overall, we made strong progress in the first half. We saw a number of encouraging developments in the portfolio, and indeed the pipeline of significant milestones remains good through to the end of twenty twenty seven. The public markets were more of a contributor in terms of fair value, and then there were a number of other positive developments in the private portfolio. That public side included the successful IPO of Hinge Health in May and strong half year results from Oxford Nanopore who beat city expectations.

3:37 We recorded total cash proceeds of 30,000,000. That's nine times what we saw in the first half of twenty four. And as a reminder, I said at the full year that we were targeting 250,000,000 of exits by the end of twenty twenty seven. And so what we've seen year to date means that we remain confident in achieving that target. We had a small overall loss for the first six months. However, NAV per share essentially stabilized in the reporting period and has subsequently increased since the period end to about a pound a share. We continue to be in a strong balance sheet position and have good liquidity, and we've still got gross cash of of 237,000,000. And obviously and that's significantly up from this time last year when we had the feature space exit and others during the period. And then a a final note is we're seeing increasing momentum in our efforts to add to our private scale up capital under management, and the market hasn't necessarily moved as as quickly as we'd hoped or expected on this front. However, we have good confidence of securing at least one new mandate by the time that I talked to you at the time of our full year results.

4:56 So on the portfolio, coming into the year, four out of our top five holdings have seen encouraging developments in the year to date. As Mark and DB will cover briefly later, the the the fifth, it's making encouraging underlying progress, is yet to close its latest funding round, and so our revised valuation has been pegged back to reflect that position. On Hinge, we were delighted for Dan and Gabe and the team to have the opportunity to ring the New York Stock Exchange opening bell on May 22. PitchBook described their successful IPO as a pivotal moment for digital health, signaling the reopening of the health tech public markets after a three year drought, and Mark will cover more on this shortly.

5:44 But in in summary, the company has traded very well since IPO and is up about 80% off the back of strong q two numbers. Oxford Nanopore, they delivered a strong first half of trading. They beat analyst expectations on both revenue and on a lower EBIT loss. I think our observation was that growth was strong across all sectors sectors and geographies. So by customer category, they grew in in academic and in all of the the three sort of applied sectors. And then by regions, even despite the sort of some of the headwinds in America, Americas was up, APAC was up, EMEA was up. So we, we're, you know, we're confident in the outlook for that company. By way of context, we are now the second largest holder behind, EIT, the Ellison Institute of Technology, which is backed by Larry Ellison, as many of you will know. Of course, Larry recently became, briefly, the world's richest man, and and he obviously has quite an incredible track record of delivering value through Oracle.

6:44 I thought it was, you know, quite interesting that The UK press has started to pick up more recently on EA to DIT and its Oxford ambitions, and Nannapur is very relevant. If you go onto the website, you can see how relevant it is to their focus on, two of their big themes, one around health, medical science, and generative biology, and the other around food security and sustainable agriculture. In terms of our position, as a reminder, we invested about 80,000,000 into the company over time. We've realized about a 110,000,000 to date, so we've already covered our cost in full. And as you'll have seen in our portfolio data for this year and last year, we've taken a small amount of liquidity on a couple of occasions. And as you'd expect, we continue to very actively monitor the company against where we consider fair value to be at any given time.

7:30 But as I said, we remain really confident in the medium term outlook for the business, and we our feeling was that their full year '25 guidance was, you know, maybe a bit conservative given the strong first half update. So we're we're we're confident in our holding. We look forward to further commercial updates from the company. There's clearly a number of interesting commercial relationships brewing there in in in biopharma and in clinical and also the deeper dive on their refined commercial strategy, which will be coming out in q four, particularly around how they intend to ex exploit the sort of thirteen to fourteen billion of TAM that they've identified in what they call the higher priority segments. And then on ESTESO, following the news that the their most recent trial didn't meet its primary endpoint back in February, the management team has worked hard to progress that program through to value, and the company published a peer reviewed paper in the, the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, JPET, to its friends, and that was outlining the impact of its compounds on various chronic diseases where tissue damage occurs. So rheumatoid arthritis, as you'll know, but also things like osteoporosis, fibrosis, and interestingly, sarcopenia or muscle loss.

8:46 And that that last bit, I think, led to the paper being picked up by some of the longevity publications because muscle loss is particularly relevant at the moment around the weight loss drugs, the very common side effects of some of the GLP-one's. During the period, the company also added a very experienced nonexec, doctor doctor Mike Owen. We're delighted to have doctor Owen join the board. He you you might recognize the name. He was a cofounder of Kymab, which sold to Sanofi back in 2021 for, I think it was a 1,100,000,000 upfront. And when he joined, he he said, you know, Esteso's bold approach to reversing tissue damage could fundamentally change the treatment paradigm for chronic diseases and therefore holds enormous clinical and commercial potential.

9:31 As I mentioned a few months ago, the full year results, the company's got funding to carry out a further trial and the location design of which is well underway, and we we anticipate that will commence before the end of the year. On exits, we had a, you know, good period for cash realizations. We set an internal target of 50,000,000 for full year '25 coming into the year, and the momentum into half two and, I guess, a more elevated level of inbound interest in the portfolio gives us a high degree of confidence that we'll achieve that and and likely exceed it. Of the examples shown here, two companies were outright company acquisitions, and one, Sentessa, was a partial realization.

10:17 For our remaining holding in Sentessa, the company recently gave a positive update at the Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Conference, and we anticipate the readout of their phase two in narcolepsy is is is pretty imminent, and that will be the next catalyst for our remaining holding. In addition to these examples, also worth mentioning, we realized a small amount of our hinge holding at the time of the IPO. And as I mentioned, the balance has gone up by around 80%, so our lockup expires on that in November. On what we've done with that cash, as a reminder, our our policy is a commitment to deliver cash returns to supplement growth using a proportion of the exits that we make in any given year.

11:05 At the moment, we are using buybacks, and we said that we'll do that until the discount gets to a lower level than 20%. And given that persistent discount at the time of our full year results back in March, we announced the intention to use a greater proportion of our realizations in 2025, and we will again review that towards the end of this year based on our capital forecast for going into 2026. The current program, is 75,000,000, and that includes 20,000,000 that we announced in June. At today's date, as of yesterday, we've got about £9,000,000 left to run on that program. And so as we make further realizations, we'll look to add to that total. I think it's worth noting the acceleration this year has been quite significant.

11:53 In fact, yesterday, I was looking at the numbers. Our share count fell below 900,000,000 shares for the first time, which means that we've now retired 15% of our capital in issue. We focused lots of our capital in the last couple of years on the buyback and on existing portfolio and getting those with the highest value potential through to their milestones and value realization. And we're starting to see as as sort of performance and market appetite continues to return, we'll start to selectively add a few more new holdings to the balance sheet portfolio, including from Parkwalk and the wider ecosystem. Before I hand on to Mark, I just want to sort of briefly look forward quickly a a reminder of the IP GROUP investment case. Three things to believe.

12:42 The first is that there is significant value potential in UK science and technology. I talked about this and exemplified this at our Capital Markets Day back in June. The second is that IP group is well positioned to exploit this given the team, the track record, the sourcing, and the portfolio, and that this represents an attractive shareholder opportunity, particularly given the discount to NAV against which we currently trade. To reiterate again, this is something that I've covered in the past few updates. This in a in a single slide, I guess, depicts the the the the capital strategy that we are following to be able to exploit that opportunity. And from the from the perspective of a a developing science and technology business, we're one of the few investors that can support development from the very earliest stages to relative maturity at the sort of venture growth end of the journey, And complementary private funds are strategically important in terms of pipeline, particularly in the case of Parkwalk, but also development capital for our businesses, and they also contribute fees to mitigate our net overheads.

13:51 In terms of scale and ambition, Parkwalk, we're aiming to maintain around 500,000,000, of assets there. Successful exits are balancing off against new subscriptions. On the balance sheet, we're focused on NAV per share delivery, and that obviously includes that 140,000,000 of cash that we've returned to shareholders over the last couple of years and, you know, is appropriate for where we are in the cycle. And then on the scale up fund sides, under which you'll remember Hostplus increased their commitment by a further 125,000,000 Aussie last year, and that's where there is a real growth opportunity to scale available capital to ensure strong returns from our balance sheet and our sources of for for our various investors. On the first bit of that, just a quick update on our differentiated UK sourcing platform, Parkwalk.

14:41 The the business here is that you'll you'll see from the numbers that I mentioned has about 500,000,000 of assets under management there, which are all EIS tax advantage capital, and we partner with many of The UK's leading universities to source new spin out opportunities. I'll just put a couple of highlights out from the first half. And so one, in addition to the alumni funds that we have with Oxford and Cambridge and in Bristol, we were very pleased to add a new fund in collaboration with Northern Bristowen, which covers Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield. And then similar to the theme that we're seeing on the balance sheet side, last week, we were delighted to announce the acquisition of one of our portfolio companies in the funds, Citora, which gave a good return to our EIS investors.

15:28 And for our PLC shareholders, that generates additional fund management fees that contribute to lowering our net overheads. And then at the other end of the of of that sort of capital strategy is our objective to add further scale capital. I mean, the context here continues to move in our favor. Our overall observation is that the public and private sectors are, you know, starting to align in terms of their policy and their approach. And during the first half, there have been quite a lot of, important points of progress, there's things like updated mandates and and increased funding for the British Business Bank and the National Wealth Fund, which have you can see there on the left hand side. And that a lot of that is highly aligned with the industrial strategy in The UK and the sectors that we focus on in turn aligned with those. And the pensions bill is currently passing through the commons, how long that's quite gonna take, but that removes some of the widely cited barriers to pension funds and similar long term capital investing more in private productive assets in The UK.

16:35 And the Mansion House Accord, which is about 17 of the largest workplace pension providers in The UK, committed to as a a voluntary commitment to have 10% of their default schemes in private markets by 2030, including half of that capital going into The UK. So there's been quite a lot of sort of sector activity. You know, our experience and probably that of the wider market when you look at mandates is that there haven't been very many VC commitments, perhaps with the the notable exception of the Schroders joint venture future growth capital. But there's not there's not been much that's really at scale, and our view is ultimately that's what's needed and where the big opportunity lies. I would say, encouragingly, the the number and the stage of conversations with potential funders has seen a a quite an increase since the time of the matching house accord, and we've added some additional experience resource to our team to help exploit that. As I said at the start, we've got a good degree of confidence in securing at least one new mandate. By the time I next talk to you for the full year results.

17:40 And then quickly before I hand on to Mark, I I thought I'd just cover a few of the companies or or or or trail a few of the companies that we are excited about and particularly those that have either presented or are going to present at our events this year. So, OCCU, our sustainable airline fuel business, Mark's gonna talk about that one shortly. Andrew, the cofounder and CEO, will be at our flagship scale up event in October. Intrinsyc, you might remember that the cofounder and CTO Adman presented at our capital markets event. There's a video on our YouTube channel if you like a lot of technical detail. That's that's quite a technical one. They have they are producing the world's smallest nonvolatile memory, and they have what's called a tape out coming towards the back end of this year. That does have very significant commercial potential given the company's initially targeting a segment of the memory market that's worth more than 50,000,000,000.

18:33 And then genomics at the Capital Markets Day back in June again, Dave Thornton, is the president there, gave a very compelling overview of the technology and its commercial applications. He also saved right till the end to update everyone that revenues will grow by more than a 100% this year, and we'll do so again in 2026, taking them to $7,080,000,000 dollars. We said they'll be EBITDA positive by the end of this year, so that's another of our top 20 companies to watch. And then on the therapeutics, our current clinical stage portfolio is worth about 23 p per share, and there's a good number of clinical milestones coming up between now and the end of twenty seven. Again, Mark's gonna cover a couple of those shortly.

19:18 And then just one other quick quick thing to mention, just briefly on the on our licensing portfolio. We don't speak much about this. We have a a licensing portfolio of IP predominantly from Imperial, and that contributes in a few 100,000 to our net overheads. There are three main projects in that portfolio, but I I mentioned at the start that the public markets have contributed in more ways than one this period. And back in January, Metcira, a therapeutics business, IPO ed in The US, and actually we licensed the core IP to Metcira. Now, of course, it's early days, but if successful, there could be quite a a meaningful source of royalty income over time. So we'll keep you updated on that one. So with that, I will hand on to Mark to talk a bit more about the portfolio.

20:07 Thank you, Greg. Good morning, everybody. So there's been a few notable events over the course of the first half. Perhaps arguably the the standout one, certainly for me personally, having sort of witnessed the whole journey of of Hinch Health. I recall, I think it was 2012, 2013 when its founder, Dan Perez, who remains the the chief executive of InchHealth, walked into our office and very confidently said, I'm not gonna make you guys a lot of money. And I think he can he can set some confidence that that was accurate now with a 50 x overall return on our investment so far on that that asset. So the company, of course, we were the first investor when Dan was still a PhD student at University of Oxford. It went on to raise substantial sums in from some of the top Silicon Valley investors under a very impressive growth and had that successful IPO in May of this year.

20:58 We were able to sell a small amount of the IPO, and we did sell a larger chunk of our holding prior to that at very good valuation in the private markets two or three years ago. But we still have the remaining holding that was worth just under 40,000,000 at the at the half year, and share price continues to trend upwards even since then, which is good news. So that holding is locked in now until end of November, but we still have that holding in shelf in the company. It has since put out some announcements of its latest results. It's a q two announcement, and again, exceeded expectations, did very well. Revenue reported is increasing at 55% year over year. They're now at a $140,000,000 of revenue in that period, and they're projecting 40% of the year on year growth going forward. So still very strong commercial progress there.

21:48 I saw there was a question in the q and a. The first question that came in in the q and a was was why sell Hinge Health when there are lots of other smaller holdings in the portfolio that are that were described as non listed and and non relevant in the question. So I would, first of all, highlight that Hinge was one of those non relevant, non listed holdings until relatively recently. And so we think there is value in holding stuff that has potential that could could could hit that that inflection curve. I think also the reason why you as investors have us holding shares in your behalf that that there are some rationale for doing that, which is that we have some technical expertise internally that we can kind of arbitrage technical risk. We can judge that better than others.

22:33 We have influence on these companies. We have extra visibility of a lot of these companies that others don't. And when those things become less true as the companies mature, that's less of a kind of rationale for us to hold them. So where that liquidity exists, that's where we start to consider the the divesting those positions. So just running through some of the other the top assets by value in the portfolio just to update you on what's been happening at some of those assets. Greg spoke quite a bit about none, of course, so I won't spend too long on that one other than to reiterate the fact that it continues to outperform its peers. They had a positive set of results that beat the market expectations, 28% rise in revenue, up to a £105,000,000 now. And key thing that we were looking for in those results was the diversification of revenue, demonstration that they're moving into applied markets, into clinical markets, as well as this strong base of research revenue that they've already demonstrated over the past several years. We really saw that this time. The revenue grew by over 50% in the clinical domain and 27% in the applied domain. So that they're really showing that they're moving into those big market opportunities, and that's that's very encouraging.

23:46 On Estessa, so as Greg said, this was frustrating that they missed this endpoint in the in the in the first phase two trial, but frustrating because it also demonstrated there's so much potential in this drug. And as Greg said, there was some data from that trial published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that demonstrated that that its ability to elicit tissue repair, not just sort of preventing degrading of the tissue, but actually showing that it's repairing the tissue, which has a lot of implications for it showed these improvements in bone erosion and disability and fatigue. And so that has a lot of implications for sort of slowing aging and to just to slow the progress and even reverse the progress of some of these really detrimental conditions that people suffer from it like like this.

24:37 Their their focus is currently on rheumatoid arthritis. So I've I've that publication certainly increased market confidence that there's a mechanism of action here that's really interesting. The efficacy of this drug is real, that there's a range of clinical indications and diseases where it could be used. So it was sort of frustrating because of this potential, and, unfortunately, that that benefit didn't manifest in a particular primary endpoint chosen over the time scale and over the cohort of this this first trial, but we've learned a lot from that. They're gonna do another trial now that implements those learnings and focuses on the things that they think they can really create a difference with, and they're well funded to do that that trial. So that's that's positive in that respect. I remain optimistic about the sort of long term prospects of that company. And finally, on this side, amongst our most valuable assets, PulmoSide, so they not a huge amount to report there because things are going well. Their their trial is on track.

25:32 That's progressing according to plan. This is some developing these respiratory treatments treatments inhaled treatments for respiratory infections like invasive pulmonary aspergillus, which is a very nasty thing that you get from with your lungs, sort of mold infection in the lungs. And that trial is is it's pretty well, and so we're still expecting that to read out in sort of h two of twenty six and have some results from that next year. The final note on this slide, but Greg also mentioned Oksut. So Oksut, have taken this impairment on the holding there. It it continues to make good technical progress. We've got very encouraging commercial progress. The company is doing well. It has been hard when we hoped to raise money for the company. Bit frustrating because we have sort of built the building blocks around, but it's we're just not quite over the line with that yet. But we are quite advanced now in discussions with some major potential cornerstone, and so I hope to have some good news on on that asset soon.

26:31 So that's the sort of the the the higher value stuff in the portfolio. That's the the kind of top end. But another just picked out another handful of assets to to mention because of some exciting developments in in those assets. So Arteos, you may recall, is a company that's developing DNA damage response based cancer cancer therapies, and they are focused on hard to treat solid tumors. It's now public that they're targeting pancreatic and colorectal cancers, both of which have a huge, unfortunately, unmet clinical need. So it's a big market opportunity for the company, big commercial opportunity. They did publish some of the sort of early data from their current trial, a phase two trial at the American Association for Cancer Research Conference, and that data was very well received.

27:17 They're funded to to continue that trial and to explore the indications that they're seeing, and so we expect to see results from that end of next year, of early early twenty twenty seven. It's the most likely time that we'll expect to I I have to sort of qualify all of these clinical trial expectations, so there are always things that can go off track and that can be delayed. But at the moment, as far as we know, on track and expect in the same time scales that we've already guided. Then finally, there's two assets to mention in our clean tech portfolio. So OCCU, I don't know. We maybe haven't spoken a huge amount about this company in the last few presentations, but this is a company in Oxford. It's been out of Oxford University that's developing the world's lowest cost, lowest emission methods of making sustainable aviation fuel.

28:07 So you use a waste carbon, and you turn it into fuel for airplanes. And good news for those of us who would like to continue traveling without being quite the impact on the environment that it currently has. So that company raised £28,000,000 in series b round during the period, and the exciting thing about that is the sort of incredibly impressive list of strategic investors who came in to really validate the proposition that the OxyCU is working on. So it was round was led by Safran, which is the world's second largest aircraft equipment manufacturer. The energy company, Allin, came into the round. IAG, which is the parent company of British Airways, came into that round. So a real kind of validation of their proposition based on the the strategic interest that they've had in strategic financial support that they've got. They've built a demonstration plant. It sat on the tarmac up there in Oxford Airport that's kicking out jet fuel that's working. It's producing jet fuel now, and they started the process to develop a full scale commercial project in The UK. So that will be the sort of next scale up of their their project.

29:14 And finally, HiSata. We've talked about HiSata in these presentations before. Very compelling proposition. They have a hydrogen electrolyzer, a machine that produces hydrogen at 95% efficiency, which is well above anything that you will achieve if you buy a hydrogen electrolyzer off the shelf today. So their 100 kilowatt system, it is slightly delayed, but we anticipate that there was a possibility that there will be a delay on this 100 kilowatt system. So that's built into their funding roadmap for the money that we raised with them last time. So they're still funded to use that system, and we're still expecting it to be commissioned during q three as in this quarter of this year. They've also got a field trial going on a device a machine running on a customer premises in Saudi Arabia.

29:59 So this is not set in the the HISAT facility. It's set halfway around the world, and that is working, and it's they've reproduced that world leading efficiency at that customer site so they've demonstrated the ability to put the machine in different places that create that world leading efficiency. And with that, I will hand back to David now. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mark. Yeah. Financial results. Nice to review again as always. I'm gonna go through this very quickly. It pretty much just pulls together all the freights and things we've been talking about. Overall, very strong again. £237,000,000 cash. That's actually up 47% from this time last year, and that's because of very successful exit feature space at the end of last year, which, of course, has generated significant amount of cash. We are, of course, slightly down from the year end if we make investments, and I'll give you the cash flow in a minute to talk you through that. There was a small loss in the period, about 1.5%, about £43,000,000 loss. It is worth making the point as you've already heard that since year end, any all of that has reversed actually So improvements in in, Nannapur and Hinge, about 35,000,000 that's come back. And it means combined with share buyback, actually, our NAV per share is now actually up. So we're briefly down at the half year from 97 to 96. We're now about a pound a share. So, that's a, as I said, a combination with the improvements at the year end and also the share buyback improves in that per share as we go along.

31:25 And the overheads are down about 14% period on period. I'll I'll do a slide on those in a minute, tweak for it. This next slide could be long, could be short. I'm just certainly going for the short option. In brief, and as disclosed in the interim results, there's a number of kind of uplifts over five or six companies and a number of write downs over similar number of companies and a foreign exchange loss of 14,000,000, which relates to the pound being strong when we convert some American denominated assets in particular. That may or may not reverse at some stage depending on currency. But those those elements just eliminate, quite frankly. And then you've got really just to do with two funding rounds, really, Artes and OXA, where actually, as you've already heard, companies are performing well, but actually, we've not either completed or haven't started a full funding. And as such, we have no choice but to actually make some kind of provision against both. And those that accounts for sort of 39,000,000 of that. So pretty much that is the story of the half, but just adjusting to those two assets in that small loss. But that loss has now been eliminated, between the year end and today.

32:30 That's why when we now look at the assets here, assets are down a small amount, from about 1,000,000,000 to 900,000,000. Those are rounded. It's actually down about 60,000,000. So it's a combination of that small loss and also shares we bought back. Of course, buyback does actually make balance sheet slightly smaller if you buy back shares. The concentration hasn't changed. So that next bit of the slide is telling you there is no news. It was about exactly 56% of the top 10 at the year end, and it is now. It's pretty much the same sort of ratio about a portfolio looks. And, actually, the next slide is also no change. This is a slide I always do that talks about how well the the portfolio itself is funded because, of course, that's very important. And actually, we've increasingly seeing this pattern whereby it's about a third that is funded to profitability. So you need to worry about that.

33:17 And then there's about a third, which over the next year, year and a half, need funding. And then another third that doesn't need funding until twenty seven seven beyond. So much of the portfolio is fairly well funded, but there will always be funding challenges and companies requiring funding at any point in time. But that kind of one third one third one third rule is beginning to come, yeah, pretty well well, solid as a rule. And now this just pulls it all together. So here's the cash shows of what's happened, and you've heard, I think, all of these numbers now. We've invested 35,000,000 in the period. You heard of a number of assets. Mostly in current assets, about 12% of that total investment into new asset as a single new company in the period. Realizations, we've talked about at length, £30,000,000. Share repurchases, 25. It it it happens almost exactly what we've realized we've used on buybacks. That's actually coincidence. But, we are, this year, committed to 50% of our realizations to be done in the form of buybacks. It just so happens that some of the buybacks we've done relate to last year. So it doesn't quite work out the math. But in short, we will be during the course of the year, I think, 50% of our realizations in buybacks.

34:22 Overhead's down as we've heard. The net debt actually regenerates about 2.6 net income on interest, but we've made some repayments on the debt in the period, which means the actual total movement is just a small reduction overall. And then there's a relatively large working capital movement. That relates to the licensing, which we just sort of start talking about a bit. What happens on the licensing? We we own some licensing assets apart from Imperial College. We're responsible for them. We often collect in the proceeds and then actually keep some, some dispute to other parties. Example, Imperial College itself. And that means you sometimes have these working capital movements where we're paying out money in the seats on behalf of others. And that's why you get a relatively large move. But that's the story of the cash. Cash is still very, strong. And overheads, I'm very glad to say, pretty much exactly what we said they'd be. So that 15 percent this time compared with this time last year, but we're gonna do what we said we'd do.

35:15 When we did the cost reduction in the second half of last year, we said we'd reduce the '23 number, which was about 22,500,000 net to about 16,500,000 net. That's what we're gonna do. 23% reduction, that still looks like what we'll achieve to the year end. So I think without further ado, I'll pass back to Greg. Thank you, Dave. You're welcome. So, leaving some good time for questions. So the summary of the the half year results. So we made good progress in the first half. We saw a number of encouraging developments in the portfolio, many of which Mark has touched on. And the public markets were a particular fair value contributor, including that Hinge Health IPO and and Oxford Anapol's strong trading. And we made good progress on exits of 30,000,000, and and that momentum into half two means we remain confident of our target of achieving 250,000,000 of exits by the end of twenty twenty seven.

36:14 As Dave just mentioned, our NAV per share essentially stabilized over the period and has subsequently increased since the period ends to a pound a share, about a pound a share. On the scale up capital and and expanding our resources as a group, our capital resources as a group, we continue to see a big opportunity. And while the market hasn't necessarily moved as quickly as we hoped or expected, good confidence of securing at least one new mandate by the time we next see you all on the, the IMC platform for our full year results. I'll just quickly remind you, looking forward, our investment case is based on these these three sort of hypotheses. The first is that there's significant value in UK science and technology given our world leading position there, and that IP GROUP is one of the pioneers in this space and with a long track record is well well positioned to exploit that, and that we hope we've set out an attractive shareholder opportunity, in the next six months and indeed out to 2027.

37:16 And then, just because I think this is a good form, these were the priorities and and future areas of focus that I set out at the full year, which we are aiming to achieve over the course of the the the time between now and the end of the year in 2027 on the exits. And I think on all of those, we're we're making good progress. So I won't go through them each in turn, and I'll I'll cover them all off, when we report you our full year results. So thank you everyone for listening, and we will now turn to questions. Great. Thank you very much. Well, that's gone well so far. We said we'd be forty minutes and we're thirty eight. So we got, quite a lot of questions, maybe not quite as many as normal. So we may get through this now. Law and test, if you don't mind, I think we've answered yours. You had a question about why you're selling Hinge and keeping some of the smaller positions. I think Mark answered that while he was presenting.

38:09 So I'll move on to next. Kane, nice to have you. Analyst from Deutsche. Nice to have you here, Kane. You've got three questions. I'm gonna do them one at a time. Mark, I'll do the first one with you. Might the adverse uncertain conditions research in The US, for example, funding on the NIH, create opportunities in The UK? Maybe. And, you know, there are there are headwinds as well and some pharma investments being withdrawn from The UK. I've heard a newspaper a couple of or so ago. So but I think we we frequently see. Remember a few years ago, this question was about Brexit and the time before that, it was about some of the recession and done so that there are lots of these kind of ebbs and flows of of funding. I think it takes time to have an impact on us because it takes time to then filter through to the funding of science, and that takes time to filter through to the commercialization that's coming out of those research outside, I I would say not in in the short term, but, but maybe in the longer term. Thank you. Kane, your second question, I'm gonna point that to you, Reg. Why do you think Larry Ellison is so keen on ONT?

39:15 Sure. I I think looking at the time the question came in, it might have been before I said why I think he's keen. I mean, I think the commercial answer is that the technology is is incredibly well suited to two of those big themes that they're trying to solve, the big global challenges they're trying to solve and through the Allison Institute of Technology, particularly around sort of human health and genetics, but also on the sort of sources of food and agriculture. Clearly, they're they're building a a significant position there, which is which is interesting. So I haven't spoken to him directly. So I I I couldn't say definitively, but it's it's a good sign if you you know, he's he's had such an incredible track record. So, like, forty years of delivering value through being able to not necessarily be ahead of the curve on on technology adoption, but certainly delivering real cash value. So I think it's a I think it's a it's a good sign, but also it's one to watch.

40:17 Yep. I got a point in next one to you, Mark, because know it's coming. Hinge Health up strongly post period end. Will you be inclined to take some profits? Well, we're locked in at the moment, and we did take some of the IPO. Then as I said earlier, it's an evaluation of the the the liquidity and the value that's available to us at any given time after that. Thank you very much. And as you'd expect, obviously, we don't want to tell you about our intentions on on our quoted companies because there's smart people out there that can do things with that information. But, yeah, we're we're pleased with that holding, and it's it's it's a good source of liquidity over time. We're next on Sam. Nice to have you here. Sam, another analyst at Berenberg. Good to have you here, Sam. I'm mentioning this because people in the past have said, can you make it clear when someone's an analyst when they're not? So I'm doing that. I'm gonna split this question. I'll do the first bit, Mark, and then maybe give you the second if that's alright. First of in one sentence, but would you be able to provide more detail on your IP licensing portfolio?

41:17 And then separately, and therapeutic programs, when do you expect licensing income to ramp up? I'll I'll perhaps do a little bit on the licensing. Licensing traditionally has been a relatively small part of our business. We inherited the licensing as part of the acquisition when we bought Touchstone. They as part of their unit used to do the licensing for Imperial College. They had a numb very large number of patents, some of what we call active ones that actually whether we had an agreement around them, and some of the ones that was just exploratory and still waiting for maybe some of the license. And we retained all of those active licenses. So there's better really for big portfolio about 80 different licenses. The the actual strength I was trying to question again. The actual strength is relatively small traditionally. We've been recognizing something like between 500 and 700,000 income a year. That tends to be the patent licenses.

42:04 You have to have a large number. Most of generate relatively small amounts. And then from time to time, you can sometimes get some really big licenses. A single license can do 95%, 99% sometimes of your licensing cap. We have kind of free licenses out there. Greg's already referred to the next zero one. It's early. It's early. We're not gonna start making claims about their value, and we're not recognizing in the books. Actually, in accordance of accounting standards, unlikely we will recognize in the books until such time as actual life of income is recognized. So, you know, you can't kind of recognize it like a potential intangible or something. But, any of the top three have the potential to, in time, generate significant revenues. And MetZero are now about a 3,800,000,000, CAT company, a GLP one agonist, and promising events with phase two trial. There are some notes out there. If that got through a phase two trial, if that then became a successful drug, there may in time be some, some decent license income that come to us, and some of it would be associated with payroll college. So that's probably what I said at the moment. At the moment, no impact from the financials. No significant impact on financials, but maybe in time, maybe and I'm thinking maybe two to three years time, you may start seeing if some of these things go well, some decent licensing income, and we'll talk about that at the time.

43:24 It's a bit of a wide one to talk about all of therapeutic programs. There's anything you wanna touch on, Mark, or whether we might treat that question of dealt with. I don't know if any of you over and above what we've already talked about there. Yeah. I wonder whether that was that was a ten eighteen as well as we've covered Yeah. I I think that is It's worth saying in in the appendices in our in our results presentation, we do do a, you know, sort of a summary of the the main holdings and where they are in their clinical development and our evaluation and and so what was sort of what we're seeing is milestones coming up. So that's a that's a sort of a ready reckoner, and I'm very happy to talk about in more detail and any of the others we haven't covered. And when we next see you, Sam. I've got another one for you, Sam. I used to split yours. I'll give it to you, Greg. I mean, given the current cash position and potential exits over the next couple of years, is there any change in your thinking around buybacks?

44:12 Well, we we I hope we've got a pretty clear policy out there. You know, while the while the discount is greater than 20, the proportion of cash that we allocate to returning to shareholders is is being done by way of a buyback. We think that's the most accretive way to do that at the moment. And at the moment, for this year, we're doing we're using 50% of our realizations to that end. We will, as always, look at that number for next year. Historically, it's been around 20% of realizations that we've returned, which we we see as a sort of a more sustainable and steady state. But, obviously, we'll look at the, you know, the relative opportunities for buybacks of our own shares versus, portfolio opportunities and and and some small number of new opportunities.

45:03 Yep. Thank you. So no no real change in the policy. The application changes, you know, each year, based on on circumstances. Great. Next, Josh L, not an analyst, I of which I'm aware. I'll probably take this. How has there been no first sight fusion fair value movement despite a complete change of strategy during the fifth? There has been a significant change in strategy and actually some very promising technical developments, which I won't try to talk to. You can ask Mark about those if you're interested. But, actually, reviewing the valuation, one of the main considerations with this, like, the the probability of funding, the likely valuation of funding. And when we reviewed it, we came to conclusion that actually the kind of value we carried out looks pretty robust around what we'd expect to value that. I might be My recollection is that the new strategy was fairly well advanced at the time of the full year valuation.

45:50 That was Pretty much factored in. Yeah. Exactly. And at the moment, I think, you know, from where I'm sitting in terms of technical side of valuing it, I think that actually, you know, we we carry it where we sort of think it may be valid. We may be wrong, but we will see. But we after quite a lot of discussion, we felt it was fairly valued in the in the movement to its actual carrying value that's just related to money we've invested in the business that's come from. So that that next, who would this be? Ah, From from MV. Hi, IP Greet team. Nice momentum in portfolio. Thank you. Any plans on a partial full sell down in Nannapur, particularly given the IT initiative? Greg has already mentioned, we're unlikely to comment on that. I don't know if you want to say anything further, but we're unlikely to comment on our sales plans for public companies. Everyone add to that, Greg or John? I I don't think anything to, to to add to what we've we've said on that front. We we know we do look at it all the time. It's not, I've said in the past, it's not our strategy to have big holdings in in large quoted liquid companies that that our shareholders can access directly. So it's it's a matter of time, but we're very we're we're we're a happy holder at the given the progress in the in the portfolio, and we we always look at liquidity.

47:04 Thank you. Next question for Bill H. Probably, Mark, about you. What is the role of IP GROUP's managing partner? Or if you'd like to just outline your role? To deliver shareholder value to to increase the value of our existing portfolio and to make exciting new investments into companies that will be future world changing company. So I have responsibility across the portfolio. I'm the person that chairs our investment committee, so I'm sure that the decision making is sound and as good as it can be. And I see all the decisions around transactions of investments and exits. Thank you. Again, I think one for you, Mark, I don't know how much you wanna talk about this. Can you this is Milos. So another analyst, Edison this time. Hello, Milos. Nice to have you. Can you give us an update on the monetization of ultra leaps patents and what you're able to talk about in that?

48:01 Mark, I think. I can. I wasn't sure if I could, but I wanted to text the CEO, and he told me that I did a LinkedIn post on Monday, actually, on this, that the transaction, you might recall, we had an agreement to sell patent portfolio to a company called CIM IP, who are specialists in monetizing patent portfolios. And we were going to close that transaction when we lost and spoke publicly about this. That transaction has now closed, and so that's very positive. And the the the company has received the the proceeds for that initial part of the transaction. There is an an earn out agreement, so it might be monetized that portfolio function closer to hopefully. That's very positive. We we we believe in the value of that portfolio. There's a lot of places where we we think those patents are valuable.

48:50 So we're optimistic about future fund flows from that. Thank you. Next one. There's more questions coming in, actually. Questions are picking up pace. Robin m, I'll give this to you, Greg. I think maybe you can talk a little bit about cash raise from private market secondary sales both in the past and going forward. Is this becoming an easy way to raise capital? I think possibly referring to small deal we did last year. Yeah. I'll let you. Thank you. So we, yeah, we did we did do a small secondary last year. Think there's another question further down that asked about how did how did the how were the assets marked and all that sort of stuff. And I and I think at the time, we said that on average across the the various holdings on the balance sheet, it was a slight premium.

49:36 It's a it was about that. It's maybe tiny premium to that on the balance sheet, and it was across it was secondary that was across a few companies on the part war funds and a few companies on the balance sheet side. There were there was a part of the the the exact total was around 23,000,000, I think, across the two pools. Yeah. And we also said that there were things like preemption rights and all that sort of stuff, which which we which meant we couldn't complete the full transfers that we plan to. I think we did just over two thirds of the of the 23,000,000 of things. That that transaction is all played through, and we do look at other options like that. You know, we've we've explored all the time that I've been at IP GROUP, which is, you know, sort of fifteen plus years. We've always looked at are there ways that we can accelerate value through these sort of structured transactions. I think secondary markets are interesting at the moment, they're interesting potentially for us, potentially, as we think about how we access scale up capital and and and build strategic relationships.

50:45 But, also, the secondary market is quite interesting because we have a a permanent balance sheet and our liquidity position is reasonably strong relatively speaking. There is clearly an opportunity where in companies that we're existing shareholders of that we particularly like or even potentially companies that we've tracked over the last few years that have made significant developments, but perhaps their cap table isn't as as strong as it could be, then clearly there's secondary opportunities for us. So, yes, we we look at it on both sides and we'll we'll always we'll always consider those those opportunities. Next one, I'll point towards you, Marcus, from the loss again. And it's one that probably just give a general feedback on. What appetite for m and a and licensing deals do you see across the life science sector at present? It's quite a wide reaching question, Anthony.

51:38 I I mean, seems good. The my context context is perhaps lacking a bit because I wasn't responsible for life sciences until a year or so ago, but I don't have a full history of staying close to this market in the way that others might, but it's that that we've had quite a lot of interest in, particularly one of our portfolio companies that's been some inbound interest from potential sort of license strike acquirers. So in in the small sample set that we have, it's maybe not representative, but it seems positive for us. Great. Thank you. I'll I'll have a go at the next one. Congratulations. This is David r. Congratulations on a good set of results. Thank you for that. On what basis is the optimistic view of exits of 250,000,000 for the period through to '27?

52:24 Well, it's basically on our internal, projections. So you can imagine we're running this capital allocation process all the time. So all the I'm always updating estimates of how much we need to invest, how much we think we're gonna realize, therefore, what's the closing cash balance gonna be. And in that process, we're always running out, three year projections what our realization is gonna be. And we do feel relatively optimistic in the period to the end twenty seven. We will generate that level of realizations. And to be clear, that doesn't include Oxford Nanopore. That's not what there's no plan for selling that. Nanopore is not in that. So one would hope Nanopore itself, if that's the numbers they're talking about, easily grow to a £200,000,000 asset on its own our share at least by that time. So that's separate. We do think looking particularly with a number of the therapeutic programs, which we think will come through in that timeline, reporting, both in '26 and in '27, which we feel if they are successful, could generate really quite sizable realizations for us. So, when you look at our numbers, I mean, won't get too much detail. When you look at our estimates, what what we think we're gonna realize, we have weighted probabilities, all types of complexity to try and estimate it. But we're increasingly finding we're relatively accurate at it.

53:31 Although it's a sort of a balancing day with 10% probability that and 40% probability that actually, it it it seems to work out really, really well, which is why we've been able to manage our cash balance to do well. So in short, it's based upon our current expectations of the portfolio as it stands, and there are quite a number of, as you can see, advocates of therapeutic readout, therapeutic quite big programs reading out, which if any one of those work could make a a serious dent in that number. And we are certainly, as we've already said, on target to doing the number we plan to do this year already. Next one, Haran, I hope you don't think I'm ignoring you. I think this is a a good question around the secondary we did last year, which Greg's already referred to, and I think we've answered. And so I'll have a next question, which could answer the last one I haven't read, but I will read it out. We'll see what we've got. This is from David RS.

54:21 Your ambition is simply to increase NAV rather than achieve a more typical target of, say, 15%, which might be expected for VC investing, should shareholders assume either that you're very cautious or simply don't believe you can create typical value on this risk or asset class in The UK? Greg, how about you? Way. We'd all have a view on that. Yeah. We would we'd like to go for that. We've gotta be realistic with the the current environment that we're operating in. However, it's fair to say that our our ambition or our objective is to deliver compelling financial returns that are consistent with that risk profile. And, certainly, when the IC needs to consider any investment in a portfolio company, we're not looking at, you know, will will we keep this holding flat. We're looking at VC type multiples and VC type IRRs.

55:16 And so the objective is to have more of those successful returns, and we focus the investment strategy more into those areas where we've seen that those success returns in the past, but also, you know, importantly, where we think there is return to be had in the future in in delivering against this this sort of science back investing environment. I don't know, Mark, if you'd add anything particular to that. I agree with that. No. Hopefully, we're moving into a period where, you know, that that the environment is a bit more accommodative and, you know, we're seeing good pickup in in m and a interest. I wouldn't say it's sort of like, you know, a a wall of m and a interest, but certainly compared to the last couple of years, there's a there's quite a marked Yeah. Increase in in inquiries. That's obviously what is is the sort of cash on cash returns ultimately, which are important. And I think if you look at the track record of things we've had, including feature space recently and others, the cash on cash record there is is is very good. It's, you know, sort of five, six times and up in the sort of 30% IRR. So that's that's what we're targeting.

56:22 The NAV gives you an idea of how it's going over time, but sometimes we have NAV setbacks and that doesn't necessarily mean that the company is not gonna deliver strong cash and cash returns in the future. I agree. I I also but I think 15¢ something you said you can achieve. And certainly, when you look at some of the areas we now focus on, it's great. Great. You said, actually, mathematically, you can see the past no proof of the future, but you can see investing in those areas in the past. We have achieved those sort of returns. So it's certainly a number we aspire to and believe we will achieve. Andrew M next. Talking about the falling value of AXA, which has been partially explained by Greg. Could he has mentioned there's some, you know, good technical progress. Could we perhaps, Mark, have a little bit more about how we feel this technical progress despite foreign value? Yeah. Yeah. I I get an email from the CTO once every couple of weeks talking about some of the exciting technical progress in the most of it's in the context of deployment on actual vehicles and real world applications.

57:21 They're doing a lot of work. Some areas I don't wanna go into too much detail, this is sort of commercially sensitive information, but they're doing a lot of work deploying their software onto to to real world vehicles. One is in Jacksonville in The US where I got an email from the CTO the other day saying that now over a thousand journeys and over 4,000 kilometers traveled autonomously, and I believe all those passengers survived the experience. So that seems to be going going very well. And the sort of equivalent proof point in the off road domain, they're currently fitting out the trucks that transport big containers around ports, and the CTO has been sending me videos of these trucks that we've now got two of these things and that could drive around without driving into each other. And so it's very rapid progress being made of deploying this software on unusual vehicles, accommodating all the parameters of those vehicles and the different sets of requirements of their environment and operating effectively in those environments. So, yeah, I think from a technical perspective, they move at great pace at at Oxford.

58:32 It's very impressive. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Going to the next one, Haran again. You do get your question out this time. There were reports in the press three Hinge Health that some shareholders sold shares at the time of their most recent results. Could IP GROUP have sold at the time? Yeah. I think that may refer to the staff sales because there was a provision which allowed them to sell in that period, which other shareholders couldn't. I'm in contact with the the bankers and with the company pretty regularly. I spoke to them a couple of times around that time that the start sales occurred. So so, no, that was just gonna happen a lot. Yeah. No. We can confidently say we couldn't have done that. No. We're we're aware that we've tested the market.

59:18 We know what we can and can't do, and we couldn't. Next one, Andrew M, a weighted 5,000,000 investment in First Light go. Think I'm off that mark a lot. I mean, it was effectively bridge funding, the standard way we often fund our companies. I don't know if Yes. It's operating capital. It's paying the salaries of the people that are continuing with the research, developing this product that they're selling to the people who are pursuing the fusion and the people who are selling that product. But I should warn everybody, by the way, that we are exactly at 11:00. So those of you who ahead on that, we won't be offended if you leave. But we're gonna carry on. I think I've got about five more questions, so we will carry on. So for those that are engaged, stay with us. I'm guessing about another ten minutes. But thank you for those that have to leave. I'm gonna hand this to you, Greg. It's not unusual, but interesting question. Which competitors do you use as internal benchmarks?

1:00:09 Or rather, are there any public or private funding vehicles you view as best in class that you draw inspiration from? It's a good question, mate. It's a good question, mate. Yeah. I mean, competitors or or comparators in The UK, I mean, there's there's a reasonably well developed market in The UK for certainly the early stage bits of commercializing UK science and a lot of the comparators. And and we don't really compete with them significantly more more often because of the because there's more opportunities for capital generally at the moment. You're often looking to collaborate rather than compete. We do compete if it's competitive deals. So on on The UK side, there's Oxford Sciences Enterprise. We've got a small holding in that. We were a founder a founder shareholder in setting that business up, same with Cambridge Innovation Capital.

1:01:04 Northern Gritstone, we work reasonably closely with, and we just launched that fund I was talking about for early stage EIS investing alongside them in the portfolio. We also work with some of the other well known VCs in in The UK, Amadeus. And then I suppose some of the the people that I have looked up to in terms of scale of business, I guess, is businesses like ICG who very successfully used their flagship credit product to build out a very scaled asset management business, bringing in private capital to support their existing portfolio and and indeed to to then build that out. So that I I often look at those comparators as as sort of, you know, ambitious directions of travel for the group. Because, certainly, it does feel that there is a a large amount of capital that that wants to allocate to this space. And so, clearly, being in a position where we're a public listed entity, we've got the, you know, the professional evaluations and the systems and the reporting, and the track record puts us in a, you know, hopefully, in an attractive position for those partners who are looking sort of reputationally at working with people that have been around for a for a period of time. So, yes, there's there's probably those sorts of businesses. And, of course, there are some, you know, world world leading VCs who are focused in in particular areas, and we we look at those for best practice and various of the team have their their sort

1:02:35 of their their favorite bloggers in in in VC space that we we track their thought leadership. That's very, you know, very well resourced on VCs on the West Coast, and some of whom are are increasingly moving into the deep tech space that where where we are. And so looking at their pronouncements and how they're seeing the world is is is all, you know, useful information for us. Thank you. I'm gonna move on to, Ian. I'm gonna point this in your direction, Mark, if that's alright. The question we sort of get from time to time, how are you finding The UK universities at present? Are there funding issues making much difference the way they're approaching tech transfer? And so separately, but connected, are any of the government funded schemes being impacted by budget constraints? And has this affected you at all? I would say yes, but I would say that's been the case for the past fifteen years.

1:03:24 Mean, they've they've always had these constraints on on budgets, and some of that has always manifested in their approach to tech transfer. And it sort of varies by university based on recent success or or or lack of in in the domain of of commercializing innovation. I think it's there's some universities that have had one standout success. They're much more kind of ready to to invest in the area of tech transfer than than others who their fingers burned by it. So I I wouldn't say that I've I've observed a a huge sort of sea change or or big fluctuation in the in the last period, but there is definitely always a budgeting pressure on tech transfer activities. And any of the government funded schemes being impacted by government advice budget constraints, again, a little bit towards ever lots. And there is definitely you will hear that if you you walk the corridors of universities that the project constraints are impacting their research. But I think in some of the exciting areas that we're focused on in areas like quantum computing and some of these emerging AI, research work, there is still good money flowing into those areas, and we've done some things in the exciting research. And UK has always done a lot with a little. We've always done good research with limited results.

1:04:38 Thank you very much. Very helpful. I'll go on next. I think I'll probably take this one. It looks like my direction is. Andrew M, thank you for this. Is it really accurate that share buyback program's accelerated? I mean, it's up compared to '24, but pretty stable in '25. Well, I mean, I guess the answer is yes and yes to that. It certainly accelerated compared with what what it did historically. Mean, I certainly, amount we bought, I think, about 75,000,000 shares just in the last year compared with sort of 88,000,000, I think, ever. So it has, yes, accelerated. But but it's a fair point within the year. It hasn't been going back at a relatively constant rate during the year. Why can our program be increased further? Well, it it could, obviously, but that's that's the correct balance, I think, you feel. You know, if we think we're buying at about the right rate using about right proportion of our of our proceeds on that buyback program, we feel it's been relatively successful.

1:05:32 I wanted to help by a very low share price. It meant we bought quite a large amount of shares in the first half of year at an average of about 47 p. So we think we got the balance right. We've already made this commitment. We're doing half the proceeds this year. So I think we feel that we've got the balance about right. Of course, one could always do more. There are some people saying, why don't you do less? So it is about trying to get the balance really. Next one, I'll probably do that as well. It fell fairly accountant, doesn't it? From Horan. The cash generated now from from sales, what was the cash value which is the holding value? Well, I ironically, they were all actually. There's about five sales over the period, and they're pretty much all public company all public company. So in terms of we haven't talked about whether was an up or a down because it was just the market price at the time. And a number of them went, I think, in terms of, example, went for about double as the main one. I think we got about 8,800,000.

1:06:25 I think at the year end, that's gotten books at about 4,400,000. So we haven't though, doesn't really make sense to talk about whether we sold them up or down at the time because they because they were public market shares in in any case. Let's have a quick look at next one. So coming down, fill in. We've heard you've had this before. Phil, if you don't mind, you're asking a question about whether we could sell Hinge or not. I think we've answered that fairly comprehensively. K. This one's always a tricky one. I'll ask Phil if and I mean, probably I'll point this to you, Greg. Always difficult, but for the shares to ride, you need happy existing shareholders and new buyers.

1:07:12 Fair summary. So who are the people who are selling? Is there a pattern, a trend, or what? And now excess is there an excess being dribbled out by a certain style of owners? That's a yeah. Quite a lot in that question. You haven't ever go at that? Yeah. Well, the the overall backdrop, probably you'll have seen the same sort of data that we see around net flows in and out of UK focused equities, which, you know, continues to be negative and quite significantly negative. Global equities, actually, the flows have started to become negative overall, but particularly The UK has been negative. So there there has been, certainly, in my experience over the last ten, fifteen years, the number of humans that we go and talk to in the in The UK who are managing small mid cap capital has definitely decreased, and the number of funds has definitely decreased. When you look at the we we get a monthly register analysis each month, and we we go through that and try and get some clues as to who's buying and selling. Often, there's changes period to period on the tracker funds, sometimes from month to month, you get some of the the larger or middle sized holdings either reducing the position a bit or increasing the position a bit. There's there's not really a huge pattern that I could that I could talk to if if I'm honest. You know, our our job is to deliver on the strategy, to be able to communicate that strategy,

1:08:42 we we seek to do that as actively as we can do. We've got a number of capital markets events we've done over the course of the year to attract new investors. Dave, maybe you just wanna talk a little bit about the the efforts we've done with with brokers this year and and the other the other sort of given The UK has been more net reduction in capital available where the other the other relationships have been. Yeah. Yeah. We're we're very proactive, actually. I mean, we have a quite a wide range of brokers. Obviously, our primary brokers are extremely supportive and very good, Numis and Berenberg, but we do also get some help with an effort called TKDY in New York, small team of five who have been they've kind of identified about 200 American investors who are interested in UK stocks, and they've been getting us meetings. I probably have a meeting on average about once a week. And then if it if they're interested enough, then Greg joins me and we do a joint meeting.

1:09:38 We think we think we it's often actually hard to tell. I know it sounds funny. We get a full shareholder register every month, you're paying down it trying to analyze. Sometimes you can't immediately identify who is what because they get bought through nominees, for example. But we think some of those American presentations are beginning to bear fruit. Cantor's have also been helping us as well. We're finding some meeting in both in America, and we've also got some roadshows in Europe coming up. Rothschilds have helped us. They took us on a roadshow in Switzerland recently. So we're actually extremely active. And you will find by the end the year, our head of global capital almost said to do some presentations in The Middle East and. So it's definitely not due to a lack of energy, and we are trying to get out and see people. And we think that is beginning to pay dividends. We think until that partly effectively in the share price. So we are getting people to, find out how interesting the story is and find out how extraordinary the discount is and what the opportunity is. It's pretty much what we're telling people.

1:10:38 Next one is from Lucas, a shareholder, from Switzerland. Hi, Lucas. Good to good to have you there with us. And you've written just thinking out loud. You're giving an additional 200,000,000 in exits in private holdings till 2027. So you add that onto sort of Nannapur, which sort of, hopefully, by then, something like a 170,000,000. Are you saying that there's an additional 70 to 80% of current market cap, might be achieved? I think the answer is yes. That was pretty much what I said earlier. Yeah. That is about right. Obviously, there's a lot ifs in that. But if we achieve that, which we believe we will on the on the so non NanaPOR holding. If NanaPOR still performs as it should, we believe it will. Yes, there's something between a 150 to a 100,000,000 NanaPOR on top of that number. We will hope. We will see. Last one. David b. Hello, David b. That's always nice to have one of You've got planted.

1:11:30 Yeah. Why are you so good? I know it's not the one. David b, I wish it's for you, Mark. Hello. Do you think that the start of US drug pricing and tariffs by the US administration is affecting pricing in the biotech market for ultimately successful innovation? If so, does that mean the model needs to be revisited for it to sufficiently profitable given the huge development costs? Psychotic. So repeated question. Yeah. A good question. Danger of being a political question. But Yeah. That is a from from our perspective, yes, I think we've got to assume that there has an impact. This is I think that's an impact. It's something that the team is factoring into the evaluation work that we do every time we make a transaction in the portfolio. So the sense of the model needed to be revised, I think it's about making sure that we're putting money in at the right price to reflect the ultimate terminal value of the company.

1:12:21 And so that's what do you describe that as a a revision of the model on a macro basis? We're doing it from from the ground up of looking at these transactions, and the value is there to be delivered in the context of the current market. But the other thing I'd say, I don't think we're really seeing this in the conversations we're having with pharma in the portfolio yet. I don't think I haven't heard that we've had pharma coming to us and saying, we couldn't possibly engage with you at least or pay this much for for this company on the basis that our the ground has shifted beneath us, but that that may come. And the last question is not a question. Thank you. Philippine. Thank you. Thank you, Philipp N. We appreciate it. Thank you everybody who stayed with us this long, and thanks for all the questions. That's the twenty ninth and last question, Jake. Perfect, guys. That's great. And thank you as usual for being so generous of your time there and addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this morning. And, of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you after the presentation. But, Greg, perhaps before really now, just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that'd be great.

1:13:27 Thanks, Jake. Yeah. So to summarize again, we've made strong progress in 2025 year to date, good progress on cash proceeds, and that gives us good confidence around that 250,000,000 of exits target to the end of twenty twenty seven. I think the the standout in performance for the first half or standout transaction was that successful Hinge Health IPO, which we're very pleased to see and delighted for the team and, of course, for our financial returns, and that's helped NAV per share now get up to about a pound a share, and, we go up from from here. And then on the share price, we've done, you know, continue to do two things that we think we can to close the discount, convert more portfolio into cash and return that excess capital with discipline. At today's price, we still think that buybacks are an accretive tool, and so we've been using that tool more aggressively that year, as David said, to to good effect, and we'll continue to weigh buybacks against new investments strictly on a a returns basis. And so we, you know, we are one of the world's most experienced university science investors, and so we we remain uniquely positioned to to capitalize on the sort of the fiscal reform that we're seeing and hopefully this rising demand for high growth innovation. So thank you all for for listening, and, look forward to updating you on progress for the rest of the year and into 2026.

1:14:46 Perfect, Greg. That's great. Thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback order the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of management team of IP GROUP PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session, so good morning to you all.