Molten Ventures (LSE:GROW) — Full Year Results

0:01 Good morning, everybody. My name is Martin Davis. I'm the chief executive officer of MOLTEN VENTURES. And with me, I've got Ben Wilkinson, CFO of MOLTEN VENTURES. We're very pleased to be able to spend some time with you this morning to talk a little bit about our results and about our business model. I'm very conscious that in these current times, there are a lot of questions out there around evaluations and around how the private markets work. But our model is very much to give access to the private markets to public market investors. And so therefore, we're very pleased to be able to to share our results with you and give you a little bit of an insight into how our model works, but also into the results. So looking at last year, and and and I'm very conscious that our financial year completed on the thirty first of March this year, and for some, that may be some time ago. But when we look over the twelve months running up until March this year, it was a transformational year for the business.

0:58 We were very strong as far as capital deployment, far greater than in previous years. But but I think importantly, we had consistently invested in tier one assets, but but almost more importantly, leading rounds. Leading rounds is something that is important for our model, but it's also it's also something that's a little bit unique about our model. So we invested significantly in investing in tier one assets. I think it's important to bear in mind these are what we would view as tier one assets because those are the assets that are in greatest demand, and we believe we'll have the greatest resilience as we go through turbulent economic times. We also achieved 13% of our gross portfolio value in realization.

1:43 And I think this is really important. Even though we do have an evergreen investment model, we're not constrained by time frames like traditional funds would be. The way to complete the model and to prove the value of the NAVs is obviously to exit for cash at a value that is greater than we're carrying on our balance sheet. And we look to be able to deliver 10 to 15% in realizations every year. The depth of the portfolio and the length of the portfolio and the maturity means that we can continue to do that. And we've done that over many years, and we're very confident we can continue to to do that. The important thing, as I said before, is to be able to exit our our assets at a value that is higher than the NAV that we carry on the balance sheet, and we have a very good track record of of doing that.

2:29 The portfolio grew significantly both in revenues but also in key milestones over last year. And our core portfolio strengthened its runway throughout its cash runway throughout the year. And just a little bit about what I mean by core, what we do is, inevitably is the later stage assets become bigger. They become a bigger part of the portfolio. And so we define our core as roughly the 20 largest assets that we have, and they generally represent 70% of the value of the portfolio. So we have about 70 companies, and about 20 of them represent 70% of the portfolio. That would be quite natural because at the end of their their period, they're more mature assets closer to exit. And each six months, we would see a few companies growing into the core, and we'd have a few companies exiting the core as as we exit those businesses.

3:21 So when we look at the core and when Ben will talk later on maybe about the state of the portfolio and its cash runway, when he talks about the core, that is about 70% of the, of of the core portfolio of of our of our portfolio. But we also, are able to continue to, attract good rounds as has been demonstrated by Ivan and Thought Machine recently and more recently, co CoachHub we announced last week, where tier one assets continue to attract, or continue to remain highly attractive to, the private market, and they continue to be very, very competitive. In each of those rounds, either in Thought Machine and, CoachHub, they're all heavily oversubscribed. And those rounds were done in today's environment with today's outlook. So we're very confident that that is a fair reflection of the value of those assets.

4:10 But we also continue to build third party AUM. We have nearly 400,000,000 of assets that we manage on behalf of our EIS and VCT coinvestors, and that portfolio continues to grow, delivering very good results for our EIS and VCT, coinvestors, but also enables us to build fees and gives us additional, capital to be able to to deploy into the market. Also, last year, the the business joined the main market London Stock Exchange, moved the official list of Euro Next Dublin, a very important step in the stage of of of scaling our business. With that, we strengthened our board with two new members joining, improving female representation, and and really reflecting our status as a FTSE two fifty company.

4:58 We continue to grow the business as far as scaling out our staff, both our partnership, the core investment team, and our platform, the core support team, to attract a very, very top, quality talent, from across the board. And we continue to focus on our ESG road map throughout the year. We'll talk a little bit about that later. And finally, of course, for those of you who've followed us for some time, the business also moved on from drapery free to MOLTEN VENTURES, in many respects, just a new label, but I think it does represent, the fact that we're a different company to where we were five years ago, and we believe that MOLTEN VENTURES accurately reflects the journey we've been on, but also the opportunity for us moving forward. So I think I'll spend a few minutes talking a little bit about our model because I'm conscious that some may be more familiar of this than others. So on the right hand side of this slide, we look at the stages that we invested in, and we're we're not seed investors, very, very early stage investors. We're not seed investors, but we do have access to the seed market through our fund of funds. And our fund of funds is the largest of its type in Europe.

6:06 We've been investing for over five years, and that program is now a 150,000,000 of value that we're going to create. We're about two thirds of the way through that at the moment as far as commitments. And what that does is we invest in the seed funds, and so we have a very small percentage of a very large number of of seed invested businesses across Europe. And so the top 1,200 or so seed invested businesses, we have through the fund of funds, very small part of those businesses. The reason we do that is not because we want to to to get involved in seed investing per se. It's because the seed all of the series a and the later stage businesses, they break out from these seed funds. And so what we want to do is get visibility for deal origination and to be able to to spot these companies before they break out because getting close to them before they break out is very important.

7:01 As they break out, they move to series a. The PLC can invest at that stage, but that would be traditionally, we would pick that up through either in on the continent through Early Bird, our relationship with Early Bird on the continent, and in The UK through our EIS and PCT businesses. But we we we would occasionally invest in series a, but the majority of our investments are at the later stage in series b and c plus. We generally wouldn't get involved in pre IPO investing, but we do sometimes and indeed in some cases, Trustpilot is a good example. We would follow right the way through from series a right the way through to listing. And when Trustpilot listed last March, we had 14% of value in that business having invested at a 14% of the business having invested at a very early stage.

7:48 So our model enables us to and we have the flexibility to be able to take the advantage of the different stages. But critically, in the seed and early series a, get access to the most exciting companies so we can identify which are the ones that are gonna be breakout successes and have really big outcomes and really follow on on those series b plus. As far as the model on the left hand side, it's fairly straightforward. It's driven so much by deal origination. And and getting close to to founders and identifying the hot deals, the tier one deals early is absolutely central to our model. By the time they become hot, then, generally, they have access to as much capital as they want, and therefore, we have to have some form of competitive advantage.

8:34 Our brand, our scale, our the fact that we're in Europe, our track record, definitely helps us, But the reality is the hottest companies will have options for where they choose to take capital. And so getting in early, that early deal origination is really important. So we we look at thousands, tens of but in some case, maybe over 10,000 companies a year to to try to filter them down so that we can identify which, other companies that we want to follow and ultimately, invest in. We're very much thesis driven. So we have a thesis in each of the key verticals, and then our deal flow team will use that thesis to identify which of the companies that are delivering the solutions that will make that will that that will deliver that view of the future that's that's drive through our thesis, and then we go after those companies. And that's how we our model works.

9:25 We also are able to access the secondary market, and that's something that's quite helpful for us as far as being able to invest in businesses that we spot that are moving very quickly. And as I said, the seed funder funds. You know, those are the sort of the key areas of how we filter and identify the best investment opportunities. Very important for our model, though, is also once we've invested in businesses, we're an active manager. So we actively manage. We sit on all of the boards of all of our of our companies. As I said earlier on, we tend to lead the seed rounds. So or the the sorry. The the the the the rounds. And so therefore, we're very close to the founders and close to the business. That also enables us to have a much better view of the genuine value of those businesses as we're creating further rounds or indeed as we're valuing them. And so getting close to them at very actively managing those companies is something that we do that that's very important part of our model. We also follow on, and so therefore, we're very happy and and have increasingly followed on on businesses that we know well, doubled down where we can see success, we can see the opportunity, and we continue to invest. And I think Trustpilot is a good example where we invested early. We then continue to to invest to all the way through to IPO where at the end, as I said earlier on, we end up 14% of the company.

10:49 So we build stakes, and we facilitate help those companies to grow. And that's the the critical element of our of our partnership team. And then, of course, we move to exit. About 80% of our exits are trade, but we do have IPOs. Most, founders, once they go on this journey, if they're of a sufficient scale and ambition, they will probably be looking for an exit through an IPO, but that doesn't happen for for for the majority of the companies we exit. But exiting at the right value at the right time is critical to our model. As I said earlier on, by by completing the cycle and exiting at a value greater than we're carrying on our balance sheet, demonstrates, the strength of the model, but also, the integrity of both the investment process, but also the valuation process.

11:39 We have two core teams. I mentioned earlier on that we, that we grew our partnership team and our platform team. We we restructured a number of years ago, and the reason this is important is that our our partnership team is a a seasoned team of deal makers that come from a a very varied background, and we think that's very important. We have traditional VC investors. We have ex entrepreneurs. We have ex operators and and people who've been in the markets. And I think that's something that's really important. We get that mix of of talent in the partnership group so that the quality of debate around assets comes at it from a number of different angles. But equally important, as the business has scaled, having the platform team that we've built up over the last few years, ensuring that we have disciplined deal origination, that we are very disciplined in our deal execution, to make sure that the processes are followed and that that we're very comfortable that we have the governance and the oversight and the processes to ensure that we execute our deals in a consistent and and correct manner. And then, obviously, all of the other backup that comes with a scaling business. So so this team operates very much together. We've scaled it over the last few years, and we think this is part of the reason that the business has been able to scale, but retain its both investment discipline, but also being able to leverage our systems and processes make sure that we remain as efficient as possible. So that's a little bit of overview

13:10 of the model, the stages we invest in, and and how we identify deals. I'll very quickly talk about some of the about the portfolio and and some of the numbers, and then maybe I'll spend to talk in in a little bit more detail. So our income to cost progression is something that's very important to us. As I said before, we have about 400,000,000 of third party assets through EISVCT, which means we actually manage about 1,800,000,000 of assets across the business. We see this as an area that we'll we'll continue to grow. And as the business grows, we think we'll have more AUM and probably more co investment funds that we manage on behalf of others, really leveraging the portfolio to enable us to be as cost efficient as possible. Within our sector, generally, people look at a 2% net cost of of running the business, 22% of NAV. We're actually well below that.

14:04 We're about just under half a percent, and we will continue to operate in that way. We believe this is very important for shareholders because as we increase our our manage our expenses and increase the number of assets that we manage in our AUM, that reduces the the cost to to for for shareholders of the investment upside. And we will continue to show cost discipline, particularly in this in these very difficult and and troubled times. And as far as the gross portfolio NAV progression, again, maybe Ben will talk about the the walk from September a little bit in a little bit more detail. But we've seen, really pleasing, and consistent gross portfolio value progression over the last period from not just under 1,000,000,000 to just over 1,500,000,000.

14:50 And and you can see where that's come from as far as what we've invested, the realizations that we've had over the years, over the year, plus the fair value movement. And all of this leads to, our view, a pleasing and and accurate reflection of the NAV per share growth at £9.37 pounds. And you can see over the years that we've delivered that fairly consistent growth through different ranges of the cycle, and and we're very confident that we can continue to provide the the the returns that we have historically. I think now maybe I'll just ask Ben to talk about the numbers in a little bit more detail and a little bit more about the construct of the portfolio and our our valuation process.

15:34 Yeah. Thank you. Some of this is repeating what we've we've had before, but this gives you a snapshot of the the highlights for the financial year just gone to March 31. The opening portfolio from the previous year was 984,000,000. When you add on the cash that was invested in the period to 311,000,000, and then you take off the realizations in that period of 126,000,000. The next part of the movement that gives us the final figure is the fair value growth, and we had 363,000,000 of growth in this period. There's some ups and downs in there, and we'll we'll go through some of that detail, in in a few slides time. But that gives us a 37%, uplift on the opening portfolio, for the year. And and we therefore end with a a gross portfolio value of 1,500,000,000 just over.

16:24 So as Martin each outlined, this was a strong period of of growth for us, but also a strong period of investment, and we've seen that in the in the uplift in the in the gross portfolio value. That number is then reduced down for accrued deferred taxes, but also for for carry. And then the number that goes onto the balance sheet is the net net of those. But when you add on the the cash position, the 78,000,000 plus some smaller adjustments that are on the on the balance sheet as well, this brings us to the net assets number of just over 1,400,000,000 for the period. And and when we divide that by the number of shares outstanding, that's how we get to the $9.37 pence per share of net asset value per share.

17:10 The other things probably to highlight on here, we did a fundraise last year, which raised £108,000,000. That was just before we did the move to the main market, so there's quite a few corporate events over the financial year that are captured.

17:23 Martin's already outlined these operating costs running at less than 1%, which is our target, but also substantially less than that at 0.3 for this for this year. And when you look at the movements that we've had from the fair value growth plus the income that we're getting from our third party sources, that feeds down into the income statement. And taking off our cost base, we end up with this profit of just over 300,000,000 for the financial year. And then so Martin probably will go through a few more of the slides, maybe look at the activity we've had for the year, and then I'll go into a bit more detail on our valuation process and and specifically how that's how that's fed through to this year's valuation. Thanks, Ben. So when we look at last year, as I said earlier on, we had a a very strong deployment year, over 300,000,000 from the PLC.

18:15 And that was a reasonably typical mix between follow ons, so where we've invested in a company that we already that that we're already investing in, but then also primary investments, and and that that makes up the majority of of our investment. And and the mix between initial, primary investments and follow ons, slightly higher on follow ons last year to to to where we've been, historically, but, but in general terms, that mix is has been fairly consistent for us, as a business over the last five to seven years. You can see some of the names that we've been investing in following on in in in existing companies such as Ledger, which is providing security for crypto wallets for both individuals and companies, free trade, online stock broking business, primary bid, the ability to allow retail investors to partake in in market activity.

19:16 Thought Machine is another company we've invested in a number of years. We've done follow on investments there over the period, and Thought Machine builds core retail banking systems in the cloud. So when you look at the types of businesses, Aircall, another one we followed on one of our portfolio companies, provides cloud based communications. So when you look at the types of companies that we followed on, they are the types of companies that are providing technology solutions to businesses to help businesses and enterprise to manage in a in a difficult, cost environment and help them to move forward. So whether it's delivering cost savings or efficiencies or helping them to manage risk or help them to engage better with customers or deliver deliver new products, now those tend to be the areas that the companies we invest in, the the the problems that they're solving. And we feel that although there will be pressure

20:13 on revenues in those businesses, it's likely to be less than in maybe some of the other discretionary consumer oriented type businesses that may come under a little bit more pressure as in the ongoing cost of living and energy price increase that we've been seeing. But we've also continued to invest in new businesses. And so we've invested in a range of business around climate. So you can see b zero, SURVEST, satellite view. We think climate's a very important sector, and that and we've we've made a number of investments, in in that area. But really, again, very much in the in the core area of of of using technology to help enterprises to be able to continue to develop. And so whether that should flex in the in the in the construction industry or FinTech OS in in financial services. Again, it's the solutions they're providing, which is, what we get so excited about and why we believe those businesses can continue, to to grow and be category leaders. They're all disruptors. All of these companies are disruptors, and we believe that disruptors have a much better ability to sustain themselves through a period of uncertainty.

21:27 And then, obviously, we have some special purpose vehicles where SPVs, where we would create a vehicle to invest particularly in a company that's moving very fast and whether that's Chocos, a rare pigment, Genesis, we we saw those opportunities. Generally, smaller investments and generally assets that are moving very quickly. That's where we would see, and that's the flexibility we have within our model. And then we've also committed, over the year, nearly 30,000,000 £27,000,000 into the fund to funds program, I mentioned earlier, and also into our relationship with Early Bird, which gives us really good deal flow, from series a deals across, across the continent. So that that's the kind of mix of investments that we make. It's very consistent with what we've done in the past, and we we we remain confident even during this period even though we we do believe that, investment cadence will slow down in the in the next period.

22:21 We do believe that the the types of companies we're investing in are still the right businesses, and we'll continue to invest in those businesses, as as we build the portfolio. I think it's important to talk about portfolio resilience, and and maybe, Ben, if you can take us through some some of the highlights there. Yeah. This is quite a busy slide, but I'll I'll I'll walk people through it. It's it's a feature of our model that the valuations obviously get a lot of scrutiny, and and rightly so. And we have processes built in to the valuations exercise that enable the the the scrutiny that's required from from our auditors, but also from our valuations committee, which is independent and sits as part of the audit committee. We also have scrutiny from our lending banks with third party validation of our valuation process as well.

23:10 So it's good that we have those checks and balances in place. And so what I'll do now is to talk through the processes that we go through at each period end. We value the portfolio at the end of March and also again at the end of September, in line with our interim and our annual results. We follow the IPEV guidelines, which are the international private equity venture capital guidelines. And you're looking for the best source of evidence for for evaluation at any period in time. And outside of listed quoted equity, when you're in the private markets, your best source of evidence tends to be a last round valuation. And the round valuation in that instance needs to have third party capital coming into the company. So there's a market price discovery process, and then you're having external new money coming in to price around. And that's important that you it's not just the internal holders of that company pricing around because, obviously, that's then not a a true market pricing process and and being evidenced by the third party capital that comes in.

24:16 So a lot of the last round focus has traditionally been the case. About three years ago, IPEV updated their guidelines to ensure that the last rounds are being moved forward to reflect the current environment at each valuation period. And so what you have to do is to take those last rounds, and you have to calibrate them. And you calibrate them to the movements in the market since the deal occurred, but also to the company's progression. Looking at its commercial traction relative to its forecast at the time of the round. So there's quite a lot of work that goes into each individual company that builds up to these valuations. And we have about 70 companies in the portfolio. The top 20 of those, as we already said, are the what we call the core, and they represent 70% of the value. And they tend to be the the key drivers of fair value. So they're the ones that that will get the most focus in in the valuation process and also in in the presentations that we make to investors.

25:17 So if I just draw everyone's attention to the the chart on the top right corner, this is showing the balance of the valuation techniques for for this period with 2022 in the salmon pink color. The calibrated price of recent investment is just over half of the techniques that we've used for for the portfolio by value. This is just over 800,000,000 of the value. But we've also been applying discounts to those last rounds through that calibration process. And the first bullet in the top left hand corner shows you the range of discounts going from 15% all the way to 90% with a weighted average discount of 25%. And that's applied to about half of those companies that have been valued within that 800,000,000.

26:04 The next most important part of the process is is looking at market comps. Now as you can see from the calibration exercise, the inference of the market is is still an important part. So the market comps on the calibrated last round do crossover in terms of the the the approach. But the market comps is purely looking at the peer group for one of our companies, applying an EV to revenue multiple based on its peer group and and reflecting the current market pricing of those of those companies. And of course, in this period, we've seen a lot of movement in the multiples, and we have seen those coming down alongside the public markets for these companies. And it's about 30% just under of the portfolio valued using these techniques.

26:51 But if you go to a couple of bullets in number three, there you can see the range of multiples that have been applied ranging from a one x all the way up to a 14 x with a weighted average multiple of just under an eight x. And at the top end of that range, you're gonna be seeing businesses that are very high growth, high gross margins, and in in subsectors that are commanding higher multiples that will use a public market peer group to reflect the those private companies. And it's quite important that we are able to ensure the portfolio is being valued in line with the current environment. And the particular focus for us is the the last rounds that have occurred in 2022, but also several rounds that have occurred post the year end. And what we have to do for the valuation process is to take all the information and points of evidence post that year end, so after the March 31 right up to when we sign off the accounts in early June. And so we're taking all of that information up to that date.

27:52 And and therefore, when we've had rounds concluding with Ivan and also with CoachHub, third party capital coming into those companies raising, in in both instances, seven several £100,000,000 from new sources, then we're taking that as a point of evidence and removing the valuations in line with that. And what we've seen in this period in particular is that the growth in the private portfolio based on those last rounds has offset the losses that we've had in the public markets. And I'll come on to how that how that shapes up in in a moment and how that bridges to the the year end valuation. I think what's true to say though is that the underpinning of the valuation process is really a reflection of the revenue growth of the companies. And that's why we we tend to put detail on the the core companies and their revenue traction.

28:48 Last year, they grew 66%. This year, they're forecasted to grow 77%. But in the in the chart on the bottom right hand side, you can see that we've split out by by cohort, the the top 20 companies in the in the core just to show that their their banding of growth to give a little bit more detail. And one of the reasons that's worth highlighting that we can't put the individual company's details specifically is because we have to preserve their private market integrity. If we go line by line with each company giving their own financial information, that would obviously be an impediment for them in terms of their own competitive advantage and ability to to grow and scale as a private company, but also our ability to to win the

29:33 best deals in the market because companies will obviously be less find us less attractive if we were gonna present all of their information. And therefore, this aggregating that we do is trying to find that balance between giving our investors more detail, but also preserving that the integrity of those underlying portfolio companies. And that 77% growth is is what we've been looking at in terms of the commercial traction of those businesses. It is reflective of the current environment. It's reflective of their current business plans. As Martin outlined, there's a mix of companies in there. There's a balance between enterprise companies, those that sell into enterprises, about 35% of the portfolio, a balance of around 30% which are selling into consumer, but that also includes the fintech companies, which will be selling b to c. And then you have the remaining balance with deep tech and hardware and also in digital health.

30:34 And I think the breadth of the portfolio is an important feature of our model. We've talked about active management on the boards of these companies. We've talked about the fact that we are a a minority investor, and therefore, you're syndicating the risk. And and and the balance of the portfolio is obviously a key feature of risk management. And the other aspect that we wanted to highlight in this period is the structure of how we invest in these companies, and the 77% of our portfolio that has protection from preference tax structures. And what that means is that when we invest in a company, so if we lead a series b round in in an an entity, we will be in the legal documents as a series b round investor. And it's the series b money that will be the first capital out in in the event of an exit or in the event of a realization.

31:22 So if the company raises £50,000,000, if their valuation is £200,000,000 at the time of that series b round, that company's valuation can reduce down all the way to that 50,000,000 of of new capital before our cost that's invested starts to be impacted. And that's another important feature of venture capital investing. It's about that that downside protection that that that comes into the structure. And what that means is that if our portfolio value is flexed, you'll see in the back of the account some sensitivities. If it's flexed down 10%, it won't move down 10% because these preference stat structures give you give you some of that downside protection. And that's particularly relevant to the 300,000,000 of invested capital in the last year where the majority of those companies will be held at cost and therefore benefiting from that preference stack protection.

32:14 And I think finally, to talk about resilience or to finish on resilience, the runway and cash runway in these companies is is crucial. It's something we always spend a lot of time focusing on. And I'm pleased to say that over the last year, while we've had a strong market, the companies have gone out and raised new capital. We've had quite a few raises that we've highlighted in in the last six months also. And therefore, the majority of the core, over 80%, has two years of cash runway. And that obviously gives them the runway to continue to build and grow and focus on their model without being impacted by the wider markets as we currently see it. This next slide is just really to bridge. So we're bringing all of those techniques that we've just highlighted, bringing those together, and it's bridging us from the valuation as of our interims in September, where we have 1,400,000,000 of portfolio value.

33:08 We then, had cash going into the portfolio of new investments, 146,000,000, and then taking out the cash from realizations, which was 60,000,000, just under 60,000,000 in the last six months of the financial year. I'll then point you to the the bar in the middle, the 168,000,000. That's the net of 195 of uplifts and 27,000,000 of reductions. That's based on the calibrated last round. And as I say, that technique of of of feature looking at the the valuations of those companies based on third party evidence of value and new capital coming in has offset the public market losses that we've suffered with the

33:47 share prices of Trustpilot, Kazoo, and UiPath in in that six month period. And then I'll probably just point you to the the final two bars before the before the total where the multiple impact of revenue growth in these companies, showing a gain of 33,000,000, but then multiple contraction effectively offsetting that gain. So it was a fairly neutral movement in the period on the multiple approach. And that's ultimately bringing us to the 1,500,000,000 of portfolio value at the year end, but as I stated earlier, taking into account movements post that year end as well.

34:31 And then this is a combination of the core. It's always hard to present 20 companies, so we we created this fan approach. The blue is showing the opening value of each of the companies. And then the sorry. The dark blue and then the light blue is the invested capital in the period. And the green is the fair value growth. And you can see that the majority of the growth has come from that top five or six assets in this period with Ivan, Thought Machine, and CoachHub raising new capital with third parties investing. Ledger has progressed its model substantially with very strong growth and also turned to profitability.

35:08 And then Revolut had raised a new round, in June about a year ago last year. And then what we've done since that round is we'd held it at a discount in the September period of roughly 25% And then valuing it on multiples based on its public market peer group, we've valued it at the March year end, and and therefore, we're still holding it well below that that that implied value of the round that they they raised about a year ago.

35:35 So those will be the key features for the valuation process, but also demonstrating the commercial traction of these companies and validated by third parties. The final slide I wanted to present is on the ESG process that we've gone through. This is embedded within our structure and our business in terms of how we look at new investments, but also how we manage the portfolio companies

36:05 on an ongoing basis. And we've done a lot of work at the corporate level at MOLTEN VENTURES, initially with setting up our own internal committees, including a a newly formed board committee focusing on ESG. We've been offsetting our own carbon, but we've also gone through this process with our portfolio where we're really getting a baseline of where they are and then providing assistance to them to to move them up on the journey. Because with 70 companies invested into, it's obviously more important to focus on them in terms of an impact that we'll have on this area of e s ESG. And I think being a listed entity, we've been at the forefront of the the governance piece from in in relation to other venture capital firms who are in the private markets just because of the the transparency that we have to provide and also the corporate structures that we we have to provide with our board and our independent committees.

36:59 And particularly, with our focus on valuations, the independent audit committee is an important part of that process.

37:10 So I think, Miles, I'll hand back to you for outlook and conclusions. Thanks, Ben. Sorry. Could you hear me, Ben? I think my bandwidth might be I can hear you. Yeah. Okay. So for the outlook for the next twelve months, we we think that oh, clearly, there is a great deal of uncertainty, and we we believe that the current geopolitical and macroeconomic factors are likely to remain, you know, quite possibly for the next twelve to eighteen months. And so therefore, we're preparing our business, and we are in a position to be able to operate with with that that current situation. And and clearly, things improve, then that will change our outlook. But at the moment, our outlook remains that that we are not likely to see a change over the next twelve to eighteen months.

37:59 However, technology that our portfolio companies are working to deliver continues to solve tomorrow's problems, and therefore, we believe that we'll continue to remain relevant.

38:10 As in as in every market that becomes tough, top tier assets, tier one assets will retain their value and will remain to be complete very competitive. And so therefore, we will continue to target those ax assets, and we think we are in a very good position to be able to succeed in attracting those top tier assets despite the current environment. We will stick to our thesis bet based investment approach. We believe that, sticking and and retaining investment discipline during these choppy markets is is is something that's very, very important. But the platform that we have has the flexibility and the adaptability to be able to operate, during these difficult times. We do think that our investment, cadence will slow. We're looking to deploy somewhere in the reach of a 150,000,000 per annum over the next period, although that is, nearly, just under half what we, what we had deployed last year. It's back to the more traditional level investment that we've seen over the last sort of five years or so.

39:14 But we will continue to broaden our capital pools. We'll continue to look for third party assets so that we can to build revenue, but also build opportunities within particular areas, segments such as climate and the emerging economic the emerging tech ecosystems in Eastern Europe that have really been caused by the the dislocation of of the conflict in The Ukraine. So we think we can continue to grow fee income as we build our third party assets. EIS and BCT businesses are very strong, and we are looking to syndicate our fund of funds program effectively taking in third party capital to help us to grow that that program without using all of our own capital. You just think in a in a period when one's looking close to capital preservation, we think that makes a lot of sense.

40:08 And, clearly, not only will we gain that additional capital to deploy in the fund of funds program, but we'll be able to attract fees from that. And and we are looking to raise a growth fund, which we've been planning for some time. We're getting very close to that, and we do think that's likely to have a first close during our financial year. So we do remain confident in both the strength of our portfolio, but also the appropriateness of the model to be able to operate through what we we accept are going to be quite choppy periods over the next twelve to eighteen months. But we're very confident that we can continue to

40:42 deliver our overall up uplift as we've been doing for a number of years. So that really completes the presentation. We were aiming to spend about forty minutes on that. We're happy to take questions, but maybe I'll just hand over back to Ali first. Martin, Ben, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, just before we move into the Q and A, I'd like to submit the following poll. And please do continue to submit your questions just using the q and a tab situated in the top right hand corner of your screen. I just want the company to take a few minutes to review those questions submitted today. I'd like to remind you the recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed by your investor dashboard. Hi, Ali. Sorry. I can't hear you. Hi, Ben. Can you hear can you hear me? I can hear.

41:27 Yeah. Martin, you I was in bandwidth problems. I I think I might be. Maybe if you could take the questions, Ben, if because I think they I think you're you're you're you seem to be clear. Yeah. So if you if you could just read out those questions and give response to us, appropriate to do so. I'll just pick up from you both at the end, Ben, if that's okay. Yeah. Happy to do so. So this let me just have a quick peer through, and then I'll I'll read through. So we have a question here from Miguel, who's asking, how does the 202277% core revenue growth target compare with revenue performance year to date? So we are being active on the boards of the companies. We see their board packs on a regular basis and, obviously, attending the meetings and any updates on trading.

42:14 The performance is in line with that 77%. That's a key part of the valuation process, is checking their performance before we sign off. You will have some companies in the portfolio that will be projecting higher growth in perhaps q three or q four as they launch new products. And for those we won't know yet, but for those that we have visibility on, we're in line with their target growth. Matthew has asked what impact has the move to the premium segment of the main market had on generating new investor interest in the company. It's true that that was a a focus for us as we moved to the main market. AIM is a very good market and and and well received by UK fund managers. We felt that the main market move was reflective of the size of MOLTEN VENTURES and and the breadth of the company, but also would give us the opportunity to spend more time with European investors, but also US investors. And and that's a process we started a few years ago, and, obviously, it takes a few iterations. But we feel that we'll still get the benefit of that over time. I don't think that it's changed our register currently.

43:25 We're not seeing that yet. But now that we're able to travel, Martin and I are spending more time out in those areas to broaden out the share register. And it's always been an important feature of the model, providing access to private companies, but doing it with a liquid vehicle at scale. And so we see the move to the main market as a as a step on that journey. Shall I take the next one from Oliver Oliver G. So there's a a comment from Oliver G saying, thanks presentation. Share prices at a significant discount to NAV. Will you look at share buybacks? I mean, I think that everything that we have discussed, it is something that we would view as as a potential opportunity when there is a significant discount to NAVs. However, we plan our cash about a 100 about about twelve months. We like to see twelve months cash runway for ourselves.

44:19 We don't really want to carry more cash than that. As I've said, we look at our deployment over this year about a 150,000,000. We can we have visibility on that. If we had additional cash, excess cash, we probably would think about that, but that isn't the situation. We have the right level of cash for our deployment expectations for the next twelve months. So therefore, we are not currently considering share buybacks. So I'll take I'll take the next question. We have a question here on on the listed companies. We've obviously had Trustpilot, Kazeem, and UiPath list over the last financial year. And there's a question about our holdings and our strategy post post those listings. And what we've always said to the market is that we will look to exit these companies in a in a in a two year roughly period.

45:06 We say roughly because we'll do it in a way that's sensible for the for the portfolio company and also sensible for for us. It's a structured way of getting out of these businesses, but it's often linked to when there's liquidity and and certainly when the IPO, there's there's at least six months of lockup with these companies, and and then it's about finding the the right time to to to exit. And we've been selling down Trustpilot. We sold about half at the IPO, and then we sold a bit more in in October, but still retained six percent of the company. And then with UiPath, we've been selling gradually over over the the period since they listed and still have remaining stakes in the company. We sold down the majority of that, realizing around 60,000,000 of of value to date.

45:53 And similarly with Kazoo, their lockup came off in in roughly February period, which then meant that they've been caught by the the sharp change in the market. And so we haven't sold down any any Kazoo, but we'll we'll look to move that out over a sensible period of time. And so I think there's another question there about whether we actually will invest in listed companies, but that really isn't our business model. We we feel that we've got much more information advantage and and and skill set related to the private markets, and so that's why we'll focus our our time and our capital. Maybe I'll take the next couple. From Matthew r is do any of the underlying investments have meaningful exposure to Russia or Ukraine? I like nice and simple answers. The answer to that is no. So I'll move on.

46:39 Do the next one from David t, do you see what who do you see as our being our peer group? And looking at the share price versus NAV, how'd you view that, and what plans do you have if any to close that gap. So the peer group is very traditionally the the the the venture growth type companies. We saw a number of others coming in last year. There was a lot of talk about new vehicles being created. Not a lot of them have been, but we see in The UK, somebody like Augmentum might be similar to us, but but there there's no one really of our size that competes directly with us in the peer group. So there isn't really this is an emerging sector, so there isn't really anyone directly comparable to us. But if you look at the the gap from NAV to share price, that clearly has something we can't control.

47:29 In general terms, most businesses are in the same sort of territory. Private companies that listed are in the same sort of territory as ourselves. So we we don't really see that as something that we can particularly affect. All we can do is focus on our NAV, on our portfolio companies, and help them to grow in value. The market will decide how to price that. And as I said, we have no control over that. The next question is a valuation process and lack of director purchase. Actually, I think the directors have significant exposure to the stock. Both Ben and I bought relatively recently at high levels than they are now. So I think there is absolute confidence in the in the in the price and the value in the in the business, but but the reality is that that's a that's a very much a a a personal decision.

48:18 And I and I hope that the the valuation process, Ben's covered that. You know, we do have confidence in the valuation process, and it is independently verified and and signed off. So so so, actually, we are we are we are very confident in the valuation process. The next one from James S, I might take as well. Are you sufficiently skeptical of all the Web three opportunities? See, there's some exposure through Ledger and One Football. I think, we are skeptical of some of the hype around Web three and NFTs, but this is still a huge opportunity. And we do continue to invest in where we see probably more in the infrastructure around moving from from Web two to Web three, and the infrastructure around cryptocurrencies, for example, ledger. So we're very confident that investing in the infrastructure is the right place to be, but we do agree that that there is some froth around around web three in some of the applications, which we tend not to invest in.

49:18 We're much more interested in the picks and chuckles for the gold rush, so to speak, and the infrastructure. And that tends to be the architecture. That tends to be where we are investing. Rodney's next question, given up to that portfolio, are you tempted to buy back GROW shares given the discount? I think we've covered that. I think Martin may have frozen. I'll I'll take the next question. There was a question from James on the unnamed company in the portfolio. I'm not sure if that's a reference to an announcement we made earlier in the year where one of our portfolio companies had raised capital, and and therefore, it was material to us, and we had to make an announcement. But I think we subsequently followed up to to say that that was thought machine. And when they announced their round at a significant uplift in in valuation, we did link it back to that RNS. So apologies if that wasn't clear at the time.

50:16 And then Edward has just asked a question. Are you expecting realizations this year as usual at circa 10% of net asset value? And in terms of discussions with buyers, so this is this is on the M and A market and and our expectations of being able to fulfill that that realizations rate that we've had previously. And we have said that that's still our expectation for 10%, so roughly a 150,000,000 based on the 1,500,000,000 portfolio value. The reality of realizations is that they're lumpy, and we can't predict the timing accurately, and we don't have a lot of control on that timing. So with that said, the m and a market, we believe, is continuing. There are a lot of corporates that have significant capital.

51:03 Of course, we don't expect there to be many, if any, IPOs in the current environment, but that's not a big feature of our realization model. Traditionally, it's been about 80% into trade sales, and and that's to corporates, principally, but also on occasion into private equity vehicles as well. Martin, I just wanna hear to make sure you can hear us okay, Martin. I apologize if we just lost you perfectly. Thank you very much indeed. I'll hand back to you just in case there's any further questions there that you would like to give a response to. I think I think we've answered that. I think you you're covering the the realizations there, Ben. Yeah. I think that we've covered Brilliant. Mark p evaluations done internally. We're comfortable how long do you get them. The question, what what external guys sign off and how long does it take from the RNS? That's a quite a complex audit process that Ben works through with the team, and that that can take up to six weeks, which is why we do them every only every six months.

52:06 That's great, Martin. Ben, thank you very much indeed. Of course, if any further questions do come in to the platform, obviously, we'll make those available to you, we can obviously publish any additional responses post today's meeting. Martin, Ben, I know investor feedback is particularly important to you both, and we will shortly redirect investors on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. But I wondered if I may, before doing so, Martin, just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, after which, as I said, I'll redirect investors for their feedback. Thanks very much, Ali. And look, thank you, everyone, for joining. I'm sorry if I had some sound problems. We are this is the first time we've used this process. We're very happy to engage with with shareholders and prospective shareholders. We believe the transparency is is is the right answer and and a good thing to help people better understand how we're managing the business and how portfolio is doing. So we very much welcome the these types of engagements.

52:57 And and as Annie said, please provide your feedback to us. We're we're happy to improve them and to do more of them. But by way of the sort of final comments, tech in The UK, the technological advance across the EU remains significant. And those technological advances, we believe, will be help people to solve the problems that inevitably they're going to be facing through economic turmoil and and an increased increased stage of the cycle and cost of living. So the technological solutions that we're looking to support are the ones that we believe help companies find their way through the current environment. The model model has maximum flexibility. Our portfolio is in good shape. They are tier one assets, and we're confident they'll continue to supply to support companies as they work through the current cycle.

53:45 And we will continue to invest in the brightest founders who are delivering the technology that's inventing tomorrow, and we're very excited about prospects for the future in in technology, but also in venture investing. So thank you all very much for your time. And as I've said, please provide your feedback. We'd be very happy to answer any other questions or indeed to to run more of these if you find them valuable. Thank you very much. That's great. Martin, Ben, thank you once again so much for your time this morning and for updating investors. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you to provide your feedback in 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 will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of MOLTEN VENTURES PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation.

54:33 That now concludes today's session, and may I wish you all a very pleasant morning. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.