Molten Ventures (LSE:GROW) — Investor Presentation on Forward Partners

0:00 Good afternoon, and welcome to the MOLTEN VENTURES PLC Investor Presentation on FORWARD Partners. Perhaps recorded meeting investors will be in listen only mode. Questions could be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply click Q and A, type your question and press send. Due to the subject nature of today's event, the team will be limited in their capacity to answer questions they received during today's meeting. However, the company can review all questions submitted and publish response where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Martin Davis, CEO of MOLTEN VENTURES. Good afternoon. Well, good afternoon and good afternoon, everybody, and thank you very much for joining us on our latest IMC webcast. And as for those of you who listen to a number of these will be aware, you know, this is a really important part of our communication strategy to a wider group of investors. I think those that know us well know that we we want to bring this really exciting asset class adventure to to a much broader group of of of investors in retail and and wealth sector is something that's very important to us. And so therefore, this channel for us to be able to communicate how

1:01 the company is doing, big events within the company, but also some of the specific themes that we're investing in is something that's really important. And and we really do appreciate just reiterating Paul's point about Paul. I really, really do appreciate the feedback that we get, the questions we get. We we will try to make these sessions as informative and helpful as possible to help you to understand what's going in the company and to assess the situation and and and and, obviously, ultimately, as investors, where the business is and where it's going. We will have some questions, we're very happy to answer them afterwards as as Paul said. But what I wanted to do really was just take you through the the principle purpose of this call is really just to give you an update on on the forward partners closing, which closed on Thursday of last week and and the shares were traded from Friday. I've got with me Nick Brisbane, who's who's now senior partner at MOLTEN. Welcome Nick, and Nick obviously founded and and ran as the CEO of Ford Partners. So it's really great to have Nick and his some of his team join MOLTEN rejoin MOLTEN indeed. But, also, it's great to have you here, Nick, to be able to talk a little bit about portfolio and then, indeed, maybe to answer some some questions that you may have.

2:13 So firstly, just going through for for reminding people about what this was all about and what have we achieved. Well, we announced in November last year, so it'd be only three months ago, seems like a lot longer, that we were proposing to do an all paper acquisition of Ford Partners PLC, plus alongside that to do a 55,000,000 plus fundraise in order to raise funds to be able to invest in both those companies, but also our existing portfolio, and indeed to be able to take advantage of dislocated private markets where prices are where this is an interesting buyer's market for for certain assets. So obviously, as I've confirmed earlier on, the acquisition was completed at the end of last week, and this really is a an important strategic move for us as a company.

3:02 It further diversifies, our portfolio, and and I think you'll have heard me talk a lot about we believe that over time, the importance of having a really diversified portfolio of assets is the way that to to deliver better returns and venture, and this really helps us to to to to diversify that portfolio. But but also to continue to capitalize on those companies that are creating technical innovation to where we live, work, the way we manage our planet. And and so we're very excited to to be able to enhance the portfolio with the added companies within in the Ford Partners portfolio. I think what it also does is is signal confidence in in the tech sector's role in in driving recovery.

3:48 We we do believe that there will be a recovery coming once rates start to move, once we go through to the next stage of the cycle. And and this, we think, is is is really important, and this underpins the importance of investing in innovation as as a as a route to economic stability and growth. And this is something that that that that political parties of all persuasions are very supportive of and and something that we really believe in. We need to get the investment to the most exciting British companies that are that are that are innovating and creating tomorrow right here in Europe. And we need to get European funds into those companies so they can continue to grow and innovate and and and and by enhancing our our our growing our portfolio, that's in a way that we can do that to to a greater scale.

4:36 It was important for us to do the fundraise at the same time. It was not a great time for raising funds, and and I've been very clear with investors that we don't like raising capital at a discount, and and it's not something that we would ordinarily look to do. But but there is such an opportunity right now in this dislocation between pricing and assets and this lack of liquidity within our market that those requiring liquidity will be willing to sell good assets at a good price. And so therefore, completing the equity raise last year enables us to to to drive the winners in the in in our own portfolio, but also in the forward partner's portfolio, but also to take advantage of those other opportunities. And and and you will have seen those followers of our RNSs that we completed seed camp deal last month, and that was a good example of us picking up a private portfolio of later stage, really interesting assets at at a at a really decent price, bearing in mind where we are in in in the cycle. I think the other thing that we took away from the equity raise, as well as we did take investors' feedback about raising at a discount, but the other thing that we found is there is a great deal of public money that is interested in in VENTURES and asset class. And we were oversubscribed, which was something that we were very, very pleased to see, and we didn't take obviously as much as we could have because of because of the discount.

5:54 But but the fact is there is a lot of interest in public market capital looking to deploy the most exciting companies within BC. And we think that's a real that was a real boom for for both the sector, but also a vote of confidence in our own model. So why was Ford Partners the right option for us? Well, it's a strong diversified portfolio run, mixed background very much previously at MOLTEN's predecessors. You know, it's a well diversified, high quality portfolio and and obviously a discount to NAV. I think what it also allows us to do is to bring in that capability. I'll talk about our model later, but those of you who are familiar with us, we do tend to invest at the a plus b level at the later venture stage or that what we call venture growth.

6:42 And there is a an increasing gap between our our our market leading fund of funds, very early investing, and where we invest. And this sits nicely within that area. It's a different capability. It's a different mindset. It's a different type of investing. By bringing in that capability, use some individuals from the forward partners and and that that heritage within that slightly earlier investing, We think that will really help us to build a broader portfolio across Europe at at investing at multistages. But I think also the important element of of of the deal, but also the fundraise, meant that we were able to bring in a a really important strategic investor in BlackRock. Although a different fund was an investor already on our register, we brought in a number of new funds into our register, and and and we're we're we're very pleased that we were able to, to bring on such as an important strategic investor, which will help us, to continue, if necessary, to consolidate the market and continue to scale. We do believe scale is important, and we think that that the forward deal and the equity raise enables us to be able to realize some of that that potential.

7:51 Now I know, I guess, a lot of you will be saying, well, what have you bought? Some of you may be familiar with some of the names. Rather than me take you through, I'd I'd probably hand over to Nick and and ask Nick maybe to talk a little bit about portfolio and and if you wish to highlight any shape weaknesses or or or way into the portfolio. Thank you, Martin, and hello, everybody. Nice to nice to meet you. Nice to well, so I'm now a MOLTEN shareholder as well, and I mentioned many of you are. So nice to join you all on the register now that this deal is complete. So, why do we want to do this deal from the forward perspective? You know, one of the big reasons, and this very much fits with what Martin was just saying, is that MOLTEN have a a high quality portfolio that's a really good fit with ours. And and it's a good fit because we focus on very similar sectors, It's very complementary from a stage perspective because, again, as Martin was saying, forward, focus is one notch earlier. And so that's we invest in seed deals and and, as Martin was saying, the core of MOLTEN's franchise is a and b.

8:59 And I'm also very excited to work with the the fund to funds portfolio. I think there's some great companies in there, and building a good program of working with the best companies in those funds is gonna be a great way to drive deal flow and and hopefully take some of those deals off the table before they get to the open market. So you can see the the names in in the forward portfolio up there on the chart. I'll spare you going through all of those, but kind of the single biggest thread through it all is is that there are software companies, mostly software, and we've had a big focus on AI, specifically applied AI since 2017. And then to give you a flavor of the portfolio in a little more detail, the two biggest assets by by the value of Ford's holding. Now MOLTEN's holding are Gravity Sketch and and Robin AI.

9:54 And so we invested in both of those businesses at an early stage. They've enjoyed rapid rapid revenue growth. They've gone on to raise big rounds from top tier investors, and they're on a path to dominate their respect their respective markets. And and that that's kind of key to our strategy investment strategy is looking for businesses that can dominate their markets because that's how you get a big strategic premium on exit. So what do they do? Gravity Sketch is a virtual reality design software business, and Robin AI is a legal tech business. So they work with with Claude, one of the leading large language models in the world, and they've combined that with their own proprietary machine learning models to massively improve the processing of of your documents.

10:44 And so looking forward, so I wanted to finish you know, I'm very excited for for the next stage of our journey. With MOLTEN now, our startup ecosystem, you know, continues to flourish the tech that, the tailwinds for for tech generally remain incredibly strong. And for seed investments, a lot of those tailwinds are now in in the AI sector still, and that's an area where we've been building expertise for for seven years now. And to give you a little flavor of of kind of what's exciting us there at the moment, one of our leading prospects is, a company that's building an AI worker. So that's a nascent trend. There's been a lot of AI copilots. So they are those copilots help people to do their jobs. The, you know, emerging trend is AI workers that, can actually do the job of people themselves, and can drive some very rapid growth and and value creation in in those areas.

11:38 So that was all from me. Look forward to getting to know you more over time. Thank you. Great. So great. Thank you thank you very much, Nick. And and I think just one other reflection I'd add to that is that and and here, you can see that we're we're bringing across a number of the team. And and, obviously, we've got Nick and Luke who have who who are the the principal investors in the team and Chris also into the into the investment team. And then we're bringing on three of the finance team to help us to to manage a portfolio and to integrate and and help us to run our own finance team. But but but talking with the the the investment team, one of the things I I I I like, you'll be aware that we had the the AI, our own AI, for those of you that joined it, our own IMC session a couple of months ago, and we talked about our strategy around AI, and there's a lot of talk about it. But what I'm really enjoying hearing from from the forwards investment team is this this idea of this applied AI, which is really about where it actually applies into real businesses and really starts to create traction. And those of you who have heard us talk about our own investment philosophy, you'll be very familiar that with with with with this approach that, you know, we we do believe that it's important that we invest in in in good sensible businesses that are actually making a change. And I think that's something that's really important for for our for our across our all of our investment thesis and our investment verticals is that we want to invest in companies that are actually proper businesses that are generating real

13:11 change. And and we're hearing a lot in in the early days from the from the forward team, and I think that's I think that's really encouraging. So I want you to spend just a couple of minutes talking a little bit about the model and and where this fits in because I've talked increasingly over the last few years that we we believe that there is a role for a multistage, a pan European venture business and a venture investing business. We just and and that can operate at scale. And and they're just there there just isn't one that we don't believe the one one that operate scale. And so in building this this platform, this multistage platform, that there are very various elements that that we do believe that we need to have in place in order to be able to take advantage of the market as and when it returns. This isn't all about immediate responses now. We do know that we're still in a very cautious period, and so investing is still likely to be to to be cautious certainly in those later growth rounds through this year. But but we need to make sure that we have those foundations built now whilst we're at this stage in the cycle so that we can ramp up rapidly as and when the market turns and we move back into to the growth phase whenever that happens in the cycle. And so therefore, as you can see on the right hand side, you'll you'll you'll have heard me, for those of you who've listened to me, talking about where we invest typically at the growth stage. Once companies have hit those those particular proof points, and those may be around rapid

14:42 revenue growth and maybe customer acquisition. It may well be around geo growth. But but in most cases, the technology risk will be done. The proposition risk will be done. And so therefore, that's when we tend to grow and therefore, it's much more about execution. That's really in the kind of growth stage where where we're we're we're investing. What forward partners bring us and I'm sorry, should say, on the left hand side then we've got the the seed stage. And this is where, obviously, there's a a a great deal of of of work going on in the seed, a lot of good ideas, a lot of businesses that will succeed. Tomorrow's, Apples and Googles will come out of the seed ecosystem, but a but a lot won't make it. It's a very different investing philosophy, and that's what we have our fund of funds. We invest in firm businesses that understand how to do that, and that's very much how we're we're we're operating.

15:33 So what forward partners does is brings us that gap in between the two that enables us to bridge between the very early stage seed investors and those that are breaking out, and it's both an investing capability and also a portfolio. I'd love to see a number of those portfolio companies that that Luke and Nick have invested in that that we brought on to the platform. I'd love to see a number of those moving into our core as as as time develops, as time moves on, and then we double down and invest in those companies as they as they continue to grow. You know, that's this is this is all about building a pipeline of businesses, and having the right deal of running access to the best companies at the right time. And I think that's something that's, that's really important to us. So so the forward partners' both capability and portfolio fits nicely into that gap between a seed a fund of funds and our our typical PLC investing.

16:31 So that's where that's that's why we were interested in the business. That's why we completed the deal, and that is how it fits into this overall platform that we are beginning to build. So before we go on to questions, probably just a little bit looking ahead, and I I did notice there were a couple of questions specifically around NAV, both both seed campaign and and forward partners and also what that means for us. Clearly, we are very close to the to the year end, March 31, so you wouldn't expect me to be giving you any insight into where where where our NAV is going to be at the at the year end. And so I can't answer those questions directly. But, clearly, we are not far off middle of April where we will be able where we will do a trading statement. We'll give an indication of where we see the NAV for for the for the last financial year.

17:23 But other than that, obviously, what we have to get on to now is integrating the team and the portfolio integration. It's not all done yet. The acquisition and the execution of the transaction is completed. However, we've now got to integrate portfolio into our processes and and integrate the team. Certainly, the early indications have been very positive. The team has fitted in very well. Nick spoke on all staff this morning about the overall philosophy of of of the of the forward team, which which I think really rang about with our people. It was very, very close alignment. So so I'm I'm very confident that the team will be very, very quickly. I think it's important to say that even though this is an important deal for us, our overall strategy, our investment mandate, and our mission to build this pan European platform remains consistent. This doesn't really change things. And as as as I've said before, you know, the fact that we are at this stage in the cycle, that doesn't mean that things have changed. It may mean that we're more cautious how we deploy.

18:24 It may mean we focus more on realizations. But the but the core of what we do, our core strategy has not been changed by, by by either this transaction, or indeed by where we are in the cycle. The strength of balance sheet is really important because that does give us operational flexibility. I've talked about us needing to have as we as we as we preach to our our portfolio companies, that twelve to eighteen months visibility around, around capital and around the ability to to to to be able to deploy and to have the the the the capital that we need over that period. And I think that's something that's very important to us, and, the strengthened balance sheet balance sheet gives us that visibility. And and as I said, allows us to invest in those high quality primary opportunities that that is at the core of our business, but also attractive secondaries at at good discounts, as I said, as we've done within the secondaries.

19:24 So so we we we we will be ending this year with a stronger balance sheet, I think, in in a stronger position with a more diversified portfolio, and I think that positions us really nicely

19:35 for the next stage of the cycle. Our annual results are due in mid June. We will be doing the trading statements as usual in the middle of April, and so we're obviously we've given a great deal of more detail there. But that's really what I wanted to cover over this session, and I'm very happy to to start to work through through the questions. We have a number of questions coming in. Thank you very much for them. So, Paul, should I hand back to you or should I just fire straight on with the questions? I think if you're happy just to fire straight on, sir, if you just wanna click on that list and just go through, read out where appropriate to do. So you need to take them or or pass them on to Nick. That'd be fantastic, and I'll catch up at the end. Okay. Thanks very much, Paul. So I'm I'm going to I'm going to knock the first one directly at Nick because I know this is an area that you've been working on a lot. And so the question is, can can we give some color on the distinction between AI workers and RPI or RPA, which is obviously a process that there's an awful lot to talk about?

20:31 Maybe I don't know, Nick, if you wanna give your your view on that. Sure. So, RPA, there are a wave of RPA companies, including UiPath, which was a a big hit for MOLTEN. And that wave started probably seven to ten years ago, something like that. And the core of RPA is linking together disparate systems automatically, so that your processes run more smoothly and you need less human intervention moving data around. So a lot of value created doing that. That is so it's complicated to do at the time. It's now relatively easy. It's it's much simpler to do from a tech perspective than, than creating an AI worker.

21:17 And and the key with with many of these AI worker, technologies is that you can let them, I say let them loose. You can let them interact directly with your customers, to have conversations with your customers. And so you leverage large language models to do that so they can speak and sound like humans. But you need additional technology to make sure that they are, a, connecting to all the relevant data within your company. But the more complicated bit then is that they also have the intelligence to understand what you're trying to achieve with the conversation so that you're not necessarily just giving the best answer back to the question that the customer asks, but you're trying to lead them towards whatever business objective you might have. Thanks. Thanks very much, Nick. So the next question is, how much benefit do you see in having an instant wider portfolio base from the risk return profile? So, look. The reality is that, in venture, the the the returns ask you to the winners, so it's really important to be in the winners.

22:21 And so, therefore, from our perspective, what we want to do is we wanna have access to this wider group of those potential winners as possible. And and the reality is that we won't know which ones. It's very hard to call which ones will be the the outsized winners down the line. And so, therefore, what you need to do is to be in as many as possible. We've always taken the view that having a really diversified portfolio allows you that gives you much greater opportunity because by the time the the the the likely winners start to get singled out and by the time those proof points start to really come through, all of a sudden, the amount of capital that becomes available to those companies increases dramatically. The top tier winners always have access to capital. It doesn't matter what the cycle is. They always have access to capital. And so therefore, what our model and our platform has to do is to make sure that we're already in with the investing rights into those companies. We're close to them at the time that they become very popular.

23:19 And so with our funder funds, we have a tiny, tiny slither of 2,000 of the best seed funded companies across Europe. You know, clearly, we're not gonna go heavy into a number of those yet, but what that allows us to do is as we start to see the winners come through that, I think this deal that we've done in Nick and and Luke's expertise enables us to start to put the bigger bets onto those ones that are likely to break out. And, of course, that then means that as we get closer to them, we know them better, then we can continue to double down and invest in them and continue to build stakes in those ones that are gonna be winners. And that's how we get the best returns. So the risk return profile does change between different stages. Of course, it does. But the reality is the amount of capital that's deployed is much smaller. But the key thing from my perspective and from us as a company is that when we are putting down those larger checks, those ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty million checks into those later stage companies, we need to be as sure as possible that this is just about them executing.

24:23 And the best way to do to be there is to be in early. And and so so I I think the the wider the wider portfolio that we added different stages, I think, just gives us that right and and and over time should deliver better risk returns. I think the next question I'm sorry. The next element of that, which is the whole portfolio piece, and I think this comes to a question somebody raised about Perkbox that was announced last week has been sold, is that we also have to work across our whole company. We we don't know which of the ones are gonna be the 10 to 15 to 20 baggers. So what we have to do is work across the whole portfolio. And as they start to become material, we have to take a view on whether they can be a five, ten x from where they are. If they can't, we need to work with the company to find the right home for them. And in many cases, that means that we won't be getting the outsized returns, but the important thing across the whole portfolio is that we get our money back and, ideally, that we make a return. And we do show an interesting I think an interesting slide in our results, which shows the amount of capital deployed, the amount of exits we've had since listing seven years ago, and which of those fit into zero return around our money back, one to three, and and and three plus.

25:39 And I think it shows that our track record of identifying those companies, we wanna move them all to the to the three plus. Of course, we do. But we also have to be realistic that when it's not gonna get there, we need to help the company to find the right home for it. And that's, I think, a good example around Birdbox. And And so so we're delighted with with that company and where it's gone and where it's got to. Would would we have been hap would we have preferred that it became 10 times the size? Of course, we would. But the fact is our job of delivering returns across the whole portfolio is to make sure that we don't just focus on the outsized winners, but we help all of our companies to deliver an exit when when when it's appropriate for them. The next question is, do you have any comments on potential risk around development of AI, two big companies, and then the next one is future geopolitics cyber issues, China, Russia. Now I'm I'm gonna I'm just gonna be speak very quickly. Nick Nick, if you if you're desperate to fall with you, then you can you can butt in. Look.

26:38 AI regulation is moving very quickly. This is something that's a whole new area. I think in general terms, regulation is not a bad thing. I think there's a lot of debate going on about it. I haven't got a great deal to add to the public debate. What What we wanna do isn't just invest in the companies that are doing the right things. Most of our businesses are are are relatively straightforward and and and don't have high strong regulatory aspects to them. As far as geopolitical cyber issues, look. This is a huge factor. There's no question. I think I saw a recent CIOs survey from Footy three fifty companies. On the top of their list is is cyber. So what we wanna be doing is investing in the companies that are providing the solutions to help manage cyber because this is gonna become an increasing issue. And for me, I think, you know, I'm not gonna get into the geopolitical issues between China and Russia.

27:28 The right or the rights and wrongs of that, the reality is technology has some of the solutions. And what we want to do is to be investing in those companies that enable us to be able to deliver those solutions. So I think the next question I think I've dealt with the perk box question, I hope. The one thing about the perk box lessons learned, I mean, every time we exit a business, every time a business cashes out, we learn lessons. And they can be all sorts. Our investment team is wiser. We we get better at exits. We do 70% of our exits are trade, so they don't always go to IPO. And so and and all of those trade ones are different. So the more exits we do, border border the portfolio, the more experience we're gathering, more lessons we learn for next time. I don't think there's anything specifically that I want we'd we'd wish to highlight on this particular call.

28:22 So the next question is, with such a diversified portfolio and so many shots on goal, how do you balance attractive secondary deals with the possible calls on capital from earlier stage investments? And I think that's a really good it's a really good question. And and ultimately, for us as as the PLC, the platform, it's our job to allocate capital. So we look at what capital we are gonna need over the next twelve to eighteen months. We look at the various pockets that we could deploy those capital capital into, and that's from from paying our bills through to our LP commitments. We have a number of those. We have to meet those LP commitments. Then, obviously, those but the existing portfolio, we're we're much more transparent these days about what we believe we need to deploy into our own portfolio in order to to preserve value. We said for this financial year, 20,000,000, which is very small for 1,300,000,000 portfolio.

29:17 We said at the half year point that we were on track to be below that. We are still on track to be below that. So we're getting much better at that. So the the amount that we need to preserve the portfolios is we're getting much better clarity around that. And then, obviously, it's it's it's those those primary deals, and we do split this between the types of deals that Nick and his team will be doing and from the from the PLC, and we'll have an allocation of capital into into into both of those groups. It's a different risk profile, different size of checks, so slightly different process. And then, obviously, we have a pot that we would keep in order for us to to do attractive secondaries. And and balancing those three pots, managing that through when we get realizations in, how do those filter into those pots? We've got a much better model for how we can manage that than we've had previously, and that enables our investment team to be really clear about the types of deals that they're they're looking to deliver.

30:16 I think it's also important that we have access to third party capital as well, as well as the PLC capital, and that drives fees, which is important for us and enables us to bulk up some of our investments. So the EIS PCT, we can raise, I've I've traditionally said, 50 to a 100 a year. It's a bit of a tough market right now with with interest rates where they are and and and more attractive opportunities for for for for the the wealth sector necessarily in the EIS PCT. So so we will be down on that this year, but we think that'll come back. So that gives us additional capital to be able to invest it because they're EIS PCT qualifying into some of the deals potentially that Nick and his team might be looking at. And and then we will continue to build third party funds, whether that's in Eastern Europe or whether that's around climate. And again, I think what that does is gives us additional capital. So so so balancing those very that that capital, balancing that liquidity is something that's is is fundamentally where a lot of the value in any asset manager is and and a great deal of the value within MOLTEN within the PLC.

31:18 And and so that's how how we manage it. Ultimately, we're looking at the best way for us to deliver the 20% NAV growth, 10% opening gross portfolio value in in cash per year, and and that is a combination of of earlier stage companies which we deliver later and investing in later stage companies that will provide, cash out sooner. So so so we have to make that, balance. But overall, the best way to deliver stable returns is to have a platform, multistage, and to have that allocation policy, and we think that's really important. The next question we have is, it's quite a lengthy one. I will read it. Lot of innovation in the world, commercially viable innovation is rare. More particularly good management is even more rare. Finding a combination of all these things wrapped in the same company is a hidden gem that is likely to yield compounded growth over many years. Can't disagree with that.

32:13 This is why Sequoia invests in the hold for the long term. Sequoia has made the most of its money in the stages that arrive after MOLTEN was sold out. Why would MOLTEN why wouldn't MOLTEN follow a similar model at least for some of its holdings? We appear to sell at the wrong time. Can we explain our thinking? I absolutely can. And I think the first thing is you're absolutely right. It is about the technology. It's about the innovation. It's about the market. It's about customers, the economic model, and about founders. And so that that all fits. I think the difference with us is that, you know, we we we haven't got the cap the third party capital available to be putting funds into these very late stage businesses. But I think as we demonstrated with Trustpilot, you know, we invested in that company very early.

33:00 We then step stayed close to it. We continued to invest. When Trustpilot was listed at 1,400,000,000 valuation, we had 14% of the company, and that's very much our model. So what we want to do is is by by the nature of the way we invest, we have to get in fairly early with relatively modest checks. But the returns exactly as as as James says in his question comes from us doubling down on the winners and getting capital deployed into those more exciting companies. That's why third party access to capital is important. That's why it's important for us to do this at scale. That's why it's important for us to continue to have realizations that shore up the balance sheet. We went out to the market twice in a different market environment to raise capital to be able to to to put into our portfolio the most exciting companies, and we did that at that time, and we delivered the return, in NAV.

33:57 And so I think we've demonstrated that that we if we have access to the best companies, we will find the capital to be able to back them. But but it is absolutely right. Riding your winners is absolutely critically important to get outsized returns. So we have to manage a whole portfolio, which is, to be honest, 80% of the hard work on a day to day basis, but staying in those winners and making sure that those winners because quite often they look after themselves because they are that good. Staying in those winners and be able to deploy capital is something really important. And I think I think I I I I'm not gonna put words in his mouth, but I think for Nick and his team, you know, what they would love to see, I guess, is some of those very early stage companies that they're investing in for us to be able to continue to back them all the way to exit. And and I think we have a number of conversations with LPs at at earlier stages or or GPs at earlier stages that say their problem is their most exciting companies get picked up by Sequoia or somebody else.

34:53 And our evergreen model and our access to to to public market capital means that we can do that. I think the only thing I would just say, because I think this is probably our last question, the only thing I would just add to that is that we we did sign up for the Mansion House Compact, which is trying to get more capital from pension funds, long term savings into venture as an asset class. I think we'll see a lot more capital flowing into this sector, and that's something that we're partaking in. We're talking with at least one very large insurer at the moment about how we can make that work. And and our model is based on the our ability to be able to get access to these deep pools of capital to be able to follow on and to really back those those winners. And I think that is something that's really important for us as a business and something that we that we think about a great deal.

35:45 I'm conscious that we were aiming for half an hour, and and I think we are probably at the end. I do have one last question before I take, and then I'll hand back to Paul. What do you currently see in terms of appetite of CIOs to implement new solutions and work with new partners? I think I'm I'm assuming that that's corporates. And and and if it's not, if it's other investment houses, I can talk about that as well. Look. In corporates, technology becoming increasingly important. We talked about cyber earlier on. Everybody has to drive efficiencies. Everybody has to ensure that they are accessing new customers, that they're utilizing the latest technology. And so, actually, I think that companies across the board are more open to implementing new technology that can a enable them to be more efficient, access more more customers, enhance their proposition to customers. I think I think we're seeing more and more of that.

36:41 And as the cycle turns, I think we'll see a great deal more of that. If it's CIOs related to other asset management businesses, there's a whole lot more discussion going on now than there was two to three years ago. There's a big liquidity crunch in our in our sector within the private space, and so I think everybody's looking for solutions to be able to to to to access liquidity so that they can meet their obligations and and invest in their best companies. And and I think that's probably the an ideal point for me to leave because to to finish because I think this is really what we are trying to do both with the Ford Partners deal, but also the equity raise. Build out our portfolio and give us that additional liquidity. So thank you very much for listening. I will now briefly hand you back to Paul.

37:28 Fantastic. Martin, look, thank you indeed for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session? You'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the management can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and is 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 session. That concludes today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.