Seraphim Space Investment Trust (LSE:SSIT) — Investor Presentation

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the SERAPHIM SPACE INVESTMENT TRUST PLC investor presentation. That is recorded meeting. Investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your question and press in. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself, but the company can view all questions submitted today and publish responses 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 Mark Bobbitt, CEO. Good morning, sir.

0:30 Good morning, and thank you to everyone who's tuned in for this webinar today. I'm Mark Bogut. I'm the CEO and one of the cofounders at SERAPHIM. And we set up SERAPHIM 10 ago to focus on the emerging market for space, very much on the back of seeing great success from SpaceX and how Elon Musk was opening up space to a much more commercial market. Last year, there was a launch every thirty four hours, whereas five years ago, it might have been something that happened once a month. So space is very much open for business. So what you can see on the screen here is some background information about our listed investment trust.

1:21 But let me... Whilst you're sort of taking that on board, let me also tell you about what we don't invest into. I think we're more defined about what we don't invest into rather than what we do. So we don't invest into launch. We think that the twenty year head start that SpaceX has, along with almost unlimited capital and being, you know, very, very capable, that we... It's just a sector that we just think it's gonna be difficult to make a financial return in reliably, so we don't invest. We don't invest into space travel. We don't invest in anything to do with the moon or anything to do with Mars, and there's lots of activity in those areas at the moment. But the reality is that the governments around the world are the only customers, and who knows when a commercial market will appear.

2:15 But we can't be certain that one ever will. So what we're really focused on when we're investing is investing into companies that are serving Earth based customers from space. So it's really about leveraging space to provide new products and services from space and to terrestrial markets. That's really what we're about, and that's the reason why we've been able to invest into companies that scale very quickly, become profitable. And as you can see, over half of the portfolio today are either profitable or they've raised sufficient funds to reach profitability based on the on the cash that they already have on the balance sheet. And this is really a backward looking position.

3:01 The the portfolio raised nearly $1,000,000,000 last year and are very well positioned for the year ahead, and that's what I'll come on and talk about. The outlook for space has really been changed during 2025, particularly with the the relevance to defense and the important part that play... That space plays in that environment. So I've got a number of slides that I'm gonna go through next that really sort of set the scene about SERAPHIM before I go on and talk about the space market and then on to the the portfolio companies that you can get exposure to through SSIT. So first of all, this is a third party chart by a firm called that Bryce that really looks at who are the most active investors in the space market globally.

3:51 The the blocks there with the red numbers are the number of space companies in their portfolio, and the the the companies that are listed above are all of the investment organizations that are investing into this space, and this is their portfolio size. And for those of you that are you'll see the names of most of the big deep tech funds in Silicon Valley. They're they're the most active investors in this area other than ourselves. We have a 147 space tech companies, so we are materially the most active investor in the space market globally. And that that comes with the range of benefits which we'll come on to. But space is a very collaborative market.

4:36 Everybody recognizes that it costs 3 or $400,000,000 to finance a space company and into profitability, and very few funds can go it alone. So that means everyone's taking a collaborative approach to space, which means that, as these other competing funds see space related investment opportunities, they'll actually get in touch with us at SERAPHIM, and they'll say, have you seen this space company? Should we be spending any time on it? We've met the management team. We think they're great. Who are their competitors, and would you like to co invest with us? Because these non space specialists take a lot of comfort from a thematic investor like us joining an investment round and and doing the due diligence that the evidence is that that company is, you know, warrants backing.

5:26 So some of our biggest deal flow providers are actually our direct competitors who are investing into these space companies alongside us. In fact, DCBC, you can see there with with 18 space portfolio companies. One of their partners sits on our on our investment committee just to sort of demonstrate how how closely we're working with these multibillion dollar US Silicon Valley VCs. So SERAPHIM is more than just an investment trust. We are... We've built over the last decade an important global ecosystem in the space market. We get a huge deal flow.

6:12 So just to put this into perspective, we get to see between a hundred and fifty and two hundred space deals every single month. We've qualified that that's more than 75% of the global deal flow. And that puts us in a very strong position because when we see a company, we can immediately identify who were their 10 competitors. These are all private companies. So we can look at who are their competitors and compare them side by side to determine which has got the best team, the best tech, best traction with customers, best intellectual property, and that really puts us in a great position to be able to evaluate companies. But even more importantly, when a team approaches us with a new innovation that they're telling us is is world leading, we can know with conviction straight away whether that is true because we'll know from the 10,000 space companies that we've already seen as to whether we've seen a particular company that's seeking to do that activity using that particular technology.

7:10 So that allows us to be able to quickly and with confidence identify emerging leaders and then draw them into our ecosystem. So let me explain that ecosystem. There's three parts to it. We have an accelerator program. We have venture funds. We have growth funds. The accelerator works with spinouts from universities from around the world and start ups, a lot of companies from teams that are coming out of SpaceX and establishing new businesses, leveraging the knowledge and experience that they've gained. So, we've just, concluded our fifteenth cohort. Our accelerator is the largest space accelerator in the world, operates, from London for Europe, from San Francisco for The US. And we take 10 companies from our deal flow into each cohort, and we run two cohorts a year. We help those companies engage with our portfolio, with our corporate partners, then also introduce them to investors around the world who syndicate and invest into their seed round, and just over $700,000,000 have now been raised for those companies.

8:20 So that's our accelerator. Hundreds of companies coming through that. Our VC funds that they are private funds, they then cherry pick the best deals that are coming out of there. Typically, about a third of them, each fund generates and originates the deals from the accelerator. The other two thirds coming directly from our deal flow. So this is the really early stage, highest risk investment. And then the later stage, growth stage, is that... Is our UK listed... London Stock Market listed, SERAPHIM SPACE INVESTMENT TRUST, and this is the one that we're talking about today. That is a fund that now has 25 portfolio companies. They raised, yeah, just shy of a billion dollars last year, growing at sort of 70% plus in terms of revenue, and and over half of them now either profitable or on the path to profitability based on the funds that they've raised and based on management's expectations for how that next twelve months is gonna play out. So across all of those activities is our 147 portfolio companies, and that's what makes us the most active investor globally.

9:31 And and this is really what distinguishes SERAPHIM from from other investors. So before I go on to the next page, just one more thing that I should add is that SERAPHIM is also the go to investor for the largest defense and space and aerospace companies. Giant companies like Airbus and SES and Telespasio, Teledyne, NEC, Eutelsat, and all of these are names that you may or may not recognize. They're multibillion dollar, multinational space and defense companies that have recognized that space is a rapidly changing market and that they need to be able to work with the emerging, most innovative companies. So all of the names that I just mentioned there have become shareholders and limited partners and backers of SERAPHIM, because we provide them with access and understanding to this incredible pace of emerging technology.

10:30 But in return, they provide us with access to their business units. So when we want to do due diligence, we're able to reach into the business units of our partners and ask them for help and support and views on these emerging technologies. So this is a, you know, really working relationship where we, as the backer of the innovators in the market, work very closely with the incumbent players. So that's the background to SERAPHIM and, hopefully, gives you an understanding of our credentials globally. We've invested into companies that over 30 different countries. We're really just seeking to invest into the emerging leading companies regardless of what their jurisdiction is. So next of all, I'm gonna talk to you about the space market and our thesis.

11:19 Why should you be interested in space? So, we break this down into three parts, space two, three, and four. But let me just talk about space one dot zero first of all. This is the traditional space market that's been around since the nineteen fifties. Started off really with, you know, government prime contractors that would build space equipment for governments on a cost plus basis. And then more recently, they were joined by commercial satellite communication companies. Now these companies as a group have become very risk averse over the years because space is very expensive. Satellites cost hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Launch is also very expensive, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, and it's also very risky.

12:08 So these organizations became very risk averse. Every time you would introduce a new piece of software or a new piece of hardware into either a rocket or a satellite, it could create entire system risk, which means that the entire rocket might not work because you've introduced the new rivets, or the entire satellite might not work because you've introduced the new piece of software. So rather than embracing, this technology, they've actually pushed back against it. They would rather these satellites and rockets actually worked rather than them being most up to date from a from a sort of technology perspective. So this is a feature of the market for the last twenty years or so. So space really fell behind Moore's Law, whereas other adjacent sectors racing ahead on the technology front, the the space market really didn't. They would prefer to make sure that the satellite or rocket works rather than was embracing the latest technology to to reduce costs.

13:13 So this is what brought Elon Musk and SpaceX into the market because he actually wanted to procure a satellite... A rocket. And when he found out it was gonna cost him 100,000,000, intuitively, he realized that he could actually just go away and build one himself to do that. So starting with a clean piece of paper, he then looked at the cheapest possible way he could build a new rocket, and that involved things like three d printed components, something that the rest of the rocket industry simply just couldn't conceive ever using because of the the potential risk. But, of course, the cost of using those components was massively reduced. He also then looks at components from every adjacent sector, really just drawing the most most up to date technology components from the mobile phone market or from the automotive market, the oil and gas market, any markets he could get his hands on to build a low cost solution, and, of course, famously built reusability into that. And what that enabled was SpaceX being able to create a rocket that could reliably launch into space but for a fraction of the cost per kilo. So it used to cost, before SpaceX, $1,086,000 dollars per kilo to launch anything into space, and it now costs $1,000 per kilo.

14:31 So this is a sort of game changing cost in accessing space. But as I mentioned from the outset, it isn't just about the cost. It's also about the access. So last year, there was a launch every thirty four hours. This year, we believe that there's gonna be a launch every day and as we move forward more frequently than that. So getting into space is like buying a ticket on easyJet now and as we look forward. And again, that has revolutionized the potential to commercialize station. This is really where we come in. We don't invest into launch, but we invest into everything that launch is taking into space is the best way to sort of categorize of what we do. And then what I've just described is the revolution that's gone on in the launch market led by SpaceX.

15:18 But a revolution along the same lines has also happened in the satellite industry, where satellites used to be the size of a car or size of a bus costing hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Entrepreneurs have now come into the space market, and they've been producing satellites, smaller, lighter, cheaper, by likewise using three d three d printed components and using components from the smartphone industry and other... In the battery industry and other industries adjacent to produce small but very capable satellites. So satellites are now the size of a small fridge, the size of microwave, or even the size of a shoebox costing a few $100,000 to a few million dollars. But, incredibly, their capability is equal to or better than satellites that cost the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

16:11 So when you bring all of this together, low cost launch and low cost miniaturized satellites, we're now in an era where it's possible to put up constellations of hundreds or even thousands of satellites. So what this is creating with these large satellite constellations in aggregate is a digital infrastructure around planet Earth. This is our thesis, and we liken this digital infrastructure to a new Internet. We think that the capabilities that it's going to allow for Earth is on the same level of order of the impact of the Internet. And the companies that we're investing into now, we genuinely believe are the Googles and Facebooks and Amazons of this next generation.

17:00 So why is this important? So if you think about satellites and the larger constellations, the larger the constellation, the the closer to real time and the data that it collects about our Earth or the communications that it's able to to to put down to Earth. So this is all about large constellations and that capability that it brings. So at SERAPHIM, our thesis is to invest into constellations, and we like vertically integrated constellation players. So in the same way that SpaceX has become really successful through virtue... Vertically integrating its supply chain, we like to invest into the same type of approach, for, constellation players.

17:47 So what does that mean? Well, it means that they design their own satellites. They build their own satellites. Someone else then launches them, and then they then operate those satellites in the space environment. And importantly, they develop their own software, their own graphic user interfaces, and importantly, the AI that makes sense and and draws insights from the massive amounts of data that they're collecting about planet Earth. So to put this into perspective, you know, at low Earth orbit, each satellite travels around the the world every forty minutes. So building up these large constellations allows you to ultimately be able to pass the same spot of Earth frequently to build up a picture of what's going on on on planet Earth.

18:35 So this is the area that we invest into. And by investing into the emerging leaders who are vertically integrated, they're able to engage with them... With customers like defense or like insurance or like real estate or like oil and gas and get feedback. And that feedback then goes into the design of the satellite, the build of the satellite, how they operate the satellite in space. They tweak the AI so that it better suits the needs of their customers. And so investing into these early emerging leaders allows them to be able to pull away from the rest of their competitors quickly. It also enables them to be able to build large intellectual property portfolios or patents around the innovations that they're doing because this is very much a greenfield site.

19:21 So our companies are able to build up portfolio of patents measured in hundreds, if not thousands. So this is the main area that we're focused on. This is really where our track record has come from, and, and we continue to sort of focus on this market. And, again, to put this into perspective, there's only actually ever been 18,000 satellites that have ever been launched in space, in the history of space since the nineteen fifties, but half of those were launched since 2020. So we're going through this very rapid buildup of this constellation, and most of the forecasters for this market believe that there are going to be a 100,000 or more satellites in space creating this infrastructure during the course of the next decade. So this is something that we're still in the foothills of developing, but a really important capability of this digital infrastructure around Earth.

20:16 So let me bring this to life by talking about one or two of our portfolio companies. Gonna start off with iSci, which is our largest portfolio company. This is a Finnish company that we invested into very early on. In 2017, we originally invested into it. And what they've developed are miniaturized satellites with a miniaturized radar on each of those satellites. And in space, what that enables through the radar capability is to be able to look down at Earth in 25 centimeter resolution, and they're able to see the ground, either day or night, but importantly, also through cloud and through any weather. So with their current constellation of just over 50 satellites, they're able to see every square meter of Earth every hour.

21:08 And then they run their change detection algorithms to determine how that square meter of Earth has changed the last hour, the last two hours, the last ten hours, the last day, week, month, year, to build up this picture of earth that no one else has ever really been able to to to to garner. And this is relevant to every sector you can think of. Right now, the biggest customer is defense. Ukraine was one of their first customers. It enabled them to be able to look beyond the borders and identify a buildup of troops so that they can get prepared. It enables them to be able to look along their entire coastal line and determine whether there's a buildup of naval threats. So there's just unlimited use cases for this within the defense environment. But just as equally relevant to their second biggest group of customers is insurance.

21:55 Those, those insurance players that are particularly being impacted by climate events, the fires, the floods, the tornadoes, etcetera. So in the event of a flood, they're able to map the perimeter of the flood, the speed of the floodwater, the depth of the floodwater, which cars or family homes or business premises have been subject to that flood. So this creates a source of truth. So when there is a claim, they can immediately look at that source of truth and determine whether that property was subject to three meters of water for five days. Either it was or it wasn't. They can then automate the payment process. They can eliminate fraud. They can take costs out of their systems that either makes them more profitable, or they can pass that on to their customers to make the the insurance lower cost. So this is just another example of the sort of commercial application, the dual use capability of the types of companies that we invest into.

22:51 So that company is growing very quickly, largely on the defense customers. It's now got about 800 staff. It's got revenues in hundreds of millions. It's growing very quickly and, you know, is a... It it it is a... The global leader in in its field. Other portfolio companies are very similar. Rather than having a a radar radar payload, they have different types of payloads, say infrared, for example, satellite view, another one of our constellations. So what they're able to do is to look down and, in in the in the resolution that they have, they're able to actually look inside the building. Are there people in that building? If that building is a manufacturing facility, is it operating on one shift or two shift or three shifts? If it's an oil rig, is it pumping oil?

23:43 They can actually look at the building itself and determine the thermal efficiency of this building. Now buildings are one of the biggest contributors to to climate change, and it's very easily to to fix by putting in the the the appropriate measures, which are very low cost. So being able to identify globally using the same sensor which are the most offensive buildings and then addressing them is really going to have a huge impact and make for a valuable business. So, hopefully, that gives you another idea of the of the type of applications, that our portfolio companies are focused on. So that's space two dot zero. This is the biggest area that we're investing into. It's a trillion dollar market opportunity, but we're still very much in the beginning of this opportunity.

24:31 Next of all, we've got space three dot zero. This is the next phase of growth for space. And what this is really about is building infrastructure in the space environment. And you've got Elon Musk back at the front of the queue here with SpaceX. They've developed their next generation launch, which is called Starship. You may have seen the videos of it being caught by these giant chopsticks. And what that new launch capability can do is take a 100 tons to space in a single launch. That means you can launch an entire constellation in a single launch. This is gonna be game changing when this comes online. But what it also heralds is the new... The next era for space around infrastructure. So infrastructure includes things like cell towers in space.

25:18 So we've got portfolio companies like AST, which is our best performing portfolio company. Valuation hit $17,000,000,000 in in the last week or so. Second most valuable space company in the world. They're building out a constellation of cell towers, which means that any mobile phone can connect without any software or hardware adjustment to the phone, and they can receive four and five g voice and video. So this is game changing capability from space. We see growth in data centers in space. You know, just think about the huge amount of data that's being collected by these constellations that needs to have AI applied to that to make sense of it, needs to be stored, and all of this can be done in the space environment.

26:04 And, of course, heating and cooling and power are are the most important things for for data centers. And with the sun and with the temperatures in space, all of these things are available in abundance. So, commercially, it makes sense. And then there are whole new areas that that relate to manufacturing in the space environment. So think about being able to lift entire dirty industries that are polluting planet Earth and taking them into the space environment so that we can continue to get the goods or services, but without polluting our planet in the process. And then finally, in this market, there are whole new areas that are exciting. Things like biopharma in space, drug discovery, drug development in the space environment. Why would you do that? Well, the reason you do that is in the zero gravity environment of space, every protein and every molecule behaves completely differently.

26:59 So an experiment that you run on Earth has a different outcome when you run the same experiment in the space environment. And the biopharma industry believe that that's going to lead to breakthrough. So we're now invested into platforms that will enable this. So two weeks ago, we law... We we had an IPO of one of our portfolio companies called Voyager. That is the the first listed space station, commercial space station. So we've got the International Space Station that has been operational for thirty years, lots of scientific experiments. Now with with Voyager, we've got a commercial space station. So companies like Astra, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, you know, they can actually put people into the space environment that can work to develop drugs within this new environment, and then go on and actually then produce those drugs within that space environment to be brought then back down to Earth.

27:57 So this is sounding very futuristic, but this is upon us right now, and we're excited about the potential for breakthrough drug developments. But just to go back to the point I was making earlier about intellectual property, we're backing the companies that are first to market doing this. So the companies that can then get patents around doing this are building really valuable long term franchises that have the potential for individual drugs to to to have markets measured in hundreds of billions. That's the main focus of our investment trust. This is about space serving addressable Earth based markets where there are real budgets. There's real problems to be addressed. We really don't invest into space four dot zero.

28:45 This is a moon as the stepping stone for Mars, permanent habitation in the space environment, space travel. All of these things, super interesting, but many years away from being able to have commercial revenues and therefore very much sort of off the agenda for the investment through the SERAPHIM fund. So, hopefully, that's made it clear as to why you would want to invest in space and and why now. Let me just take this another step deeper to just help you understand the implications of that. So think about these constellations and their capability about gathering information using different sensors and and the different use cases. So one of the biggest use cases at the moment is defense. So every satellite has the dual use capability to defer... To provide a service for defense, but also to provide services to commercial opportunities as well. So giant themes like climate and sustainability, like autonomous mobility, like smart cities, like the drone economy, like food security. These are giant themes that this data and communication tsunami from space is going to be able to address. And then you've got every single vertical you can think about from agriculture, being able to identify which parts of the field require water so that you don't water the entire field, you just water the parts of the field that require water, preserving the precious commodity of water,

30:15 enabling the plants to grow more robustly, and not washing off the pesticide that has been put onto those plants the day before, which then goes into the soil and and ruins the ecology. You've got every sector that is going to be able to use this in a myriad of different ways, not just the ones identified there, oil and gas, mining, logistics, maritime. There really isn't a sector. So just put this into the perspective of of GPS. GPS, the blue dot in your mobile phone, It's really now used as a utility by consumers, but also every single industry. It's turned entire industries on the head. Think about the global taxi industry and how that has been revolutionized by Uber across every country in the world. And we believe that this next generation of space capability that we're investing into is going to be that impactful.

31:11 The GPS, that blue dot in your mobile phone, has three pieces of information, longitude, latitude, and time, and yet it generates tens of billions of dollars of enterprise value every year. The green dot in your mobile phone, if you think about eyesight as an example, that's gathering this information hour by hour of every square meter of Earth, that green dot in your mobile phone is going to have hundreds of pieces of information about that spot on Earth and how it's changed over time. And we believe that that is going to generate hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of market opportunity across all of these themes that I've just shared with you.

31:57 So space is thriving and is being driven by the the tailwinds of defense. So let me help you understand, the role that space plays within defense. So a number of really important elements. So first of all, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. So these are sort of fundamental to defense, and it's all done by the satellite constellations using different types of sensors to be able to build up a picture of whatever is going on on the ground for command and control. Then you've got secure communications. So this is about providing Internet and telephone capability from the space environment.

32:45 I'm sure you're all aware of what went on in Ukraine. As soon as Russia invaded, they destroyed the ground based telecommunication capability, and it was necessary for Sterling to step in to provide the telephone capability and Internet capability immediately across the Ukraine. So secure communications is an absolute key element of defense. Then, of course, GPS for navigation. GPS was originally developed for military applications and now, as we just discussed, has huge applications more commercially. And then you've got in space capability, which in short is just making sure that the satellites that you rely on in the space environment are protected from adversaries who were trying to block them or destroy them to to to inhibit the ability for for them to be able to use for comms navigation or intelligence.

33:50 So just taking a step back, everyone's aware of what's been going on in the world in in in recent months. The US has made it clear that they're no longer prepared to fund two thirds of the annual bill for NATO and that Europe has to stand on its own two feet. This has led to a €800,000,000,000 defense bucket being created by the leaders in Europe, 500,000,000,000 on top of that in Germany alone. And this is this is to really help them address the the gaps in capability they'll be left behind when they no longer rely on The US. And the core areas that that that Europe has a deficit in is intelligence satellites and in the space based capability.

34:43 These are the two biggest areas that they that they have very limited capability in. Because largely, they've just relied on The US to do this for them, has been fine up until now. So now there's an urgency to address that capability, and and the types of companies like the ones that I've mentioned in the portfolio are very much central for the type of capability that they need. So let's talk more about defense. So Ukraine conflict has changed everything. Warfare has completely changed and will never be the same again. It's no longer about tanks and about helicopters. It's now about cyber warfare. It's about commercial companies being used in the space environment.

35:29 You know, commercial companies represent the cutting edge of what's available in a particular market. And having that technology advantage is absolutely key for for winning against your aggressors. So this is the reason why Ukraine has been drawing on companies like Eyesight to give them an advantage within the space environment. Then you've got drone warfare, these ultra low cost drones costing a few 100 to a few thousand dollars each that have really just proved pivotal in the Ukraine war and really a representative of where warfare has moved to. But a drone is absolutely reliant on the space environment for GPS and also for connectivity. To take one of those away and drones don't operate. So drone ecosystem is wholly reliant on the space ecosystem to enable it. And then you've got the electronic warfare around jamming and spoofing, which is now, you know, a core part of the armory within that within that environment. So space plays a role across all of those elements.

36:42 So as a consequence, when you think about SSIT, there's really two themes that we're focused on. We're right now dominated by defense because the defense customer is hammering on the doors of our portfolio companies because they have cutting edge capability that gives them an edge in in in this theater. And there's been significant money put into this area. So we just talked about in Europow, there's $800,000,000,000 from European governments. We've just seen in the news this week that governments in NATO have committed to a 5% of GDP expenditure level. You know, this is just generational change. This is unheard of. This is massive amounts of money that are going to be deployed in Europe to address the very things that we've just been talking about. And then over the pond, you've got Donald Trump's trillion dollar defense budget and that $250,000,000,000 golden dome missile defense system, which is very space centric.

37:47 So in defense, massive amounts of things going on that are relevant to space, and this is the reason why for for many quarters, we've been talking about how SERAPHIM is very well positioned for this. But just the flip side of this, the dual use element, the next biggest area that we're focused on is around climate and security and and sustainability. Trillions of dollars are still being deployed in that area as customers and as as investors and all of our companies being able to serve both of these markets at the same time. So what I like to think is that defense provides a... An immediate revenue stream. It's rapidly growing our companies. But what that is actually doing is it's accelerating the technical development of our companies, the build out of their constellations, the size of the constellation being important when it comes down to the timeliness of the data. And this is all really benefiting their climate capability that's really going to then kick in in in in in the future to provide a next source of revenue and growth for the companies that we're invested into.

38:59 Two more slides to go, and then I'll open for questions. I see there's quite a few that have come in as I've been speaking. So I'm only gonna focus on one part of this slide, which is the right hand side, which looks at the INVESTMENT TRUST, the top 10 companies which account for 80%, and and then the sort of cash level that we have available. I'm gonna talk about some of the the companies here. So seven of the top 10 companies, defense is their largest customer. Some of them are exclusively a defense focused now. And this leads to the overall NAV being more than 70%. In fact, it's closer to 80% where defense is the customer.

39:47 Over 60 in UK and Europe, which is really gonna benefit from this massive budget that I've just laid out for you there. So you can see that the top three companies there, ISI, which we purposefully took a double stake in when we when we invested them. We... When we last invested, we bought a secondary and invested $25,000,000 in order to give us the... This huge stake in this business. We doubled down because we had such high conviction, and that is now really coming through. This is our best performing company and is is growing very quickly. On a weekly basis, we're announcing new European governments that have signed up major, major contracts measured in hundreds of millions of dollars with ISI for them to access sovereign capability and all of the capabilities that that ISI enables them to have.

40:47 Diorbit and AllSpace are two of the other portfolio companies, both of them with a a bias and focus around defense. And those three companies, those three European companies account for 50% of NAV. We're very focused unashamedly, and we believe that the fund is very well positioned for the the next phase of growth that's coming through in defense. We've got companies like LEOLABS as an example, which uses ground brace radars to look up into the space environment to identify something the size of a 2p piece, 2,000 kilometers away from Earth, and then is able in real time to to look at all of those pieces and then bring that into a real time database to enable satellite operators to be able to autonomously move their satellites in the way of any oncoming danger.

41:39 It provides a dataset for regulators, for insurers. Effectively, it's creating a Google Maps for space for the safe operation within the space environment. Hawkeye and SatView are both constellations in the space environment with different payloads to provide different superpowers that are being used in in defense. AST is our is our cell towers in space, second most valuable space company on Earth and growing very quickly. And Zona Space Systems is a private GPS network, the only one of its kind. They're building out a low Earth orbit GPS network that will provide higher resolution GPS, centimeter accuracy, it can be secured in the military grade in the way that GPS can't at the moment. And these are features that are a real requirement for our autonomous future to be centimeter accurate and to be something that's difficult to spoof and that can be cyber secure. So that company is growing very quickly.

42:52 And then the final one there, Xeno, a recent addition to the portfolio, nuclear power batteries. So the Apollo missions used nuclear batteries, plutonium. They were very expensive and very dangerous. This company has really bought this into into the into the modern day, size of a microwave and providing a ten year power source. Three customers already, 60,000,000 in contracts. One is for NASA with a space based application. One is the DOD in The US for a military based application, and another one is for a commercial company to provide power for autonomous underwater submarines that will be patrolling the Internet cables to keep them from harm's way.

43:39 So that's the portfolio. That's the positioning around space, And, you'll see my enthusiasm for how well we're positioned and and what we believe the outcome for the fund's gonna be over the next few years. I won't dwell on this outlook other than to say that although the share price has had a a good rally in recent weeks, we're still set at a discount. And for the life of me, I can't understand why. I know that the investment trust market is subject to a discount, but if there's ever a trust that we should should be set on a premium, it's us. If I look at other companies in space or defense, all of them have doubled and tripled and quadrupled across recent weeks and quarters, and we haven't.

44:29 Whilst our companies that are serving this market have been announcing major contracts and are absolutely thriving in this environment, and it's not really being reflected in our NAV because it's a it's a backward measure. It looks back in history. It's the value of the last round and is not really reflective of them... Of of all of the activity that's been going on during the course of the last few quarters that I've outlined during the discussion today. So so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna turn to answer some some of the questions. Fantastic. Why don't why don't you just take a moment to have a look at those? Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for submitting those questions. You already have done so today, and please continue to do so. And just while Mark takes a few moments to review those questions, I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Mark, as you said, we have received a number of questions that have come through today and thank you for everyone submitting those. If I may just hand over to you, just where appropriate to do so, read out the question, give you a response and I'll pick up from you at the end. Sure. Okay.

45:37 So the first question was, could you talk about your investment in iSight? Well, hopefully, I I covered that off during the session, but this is an area that we are... That we're we're really super excited about. We believe that this company is the leading company in Europe. In fact, we... It's... We... It's the leading global company in radar satellites. We believe that it's not only very well positioned for defense, but it's positioned to address many, many markets. And, hopefully, my comparison against its application of GPS is one that really demonstrates why we think this company has the potential to have enterprise value measured in the tens of billions of dollars. So we look forward to continuing to share with you updates commercially that this company announces.

46:27 And as I said, there has been six or seven commercial announcements in recent weeks that that just generate just massive growth in this business. The next question is, are there any plans for any of your seeded companies to list on the market as Voyager did recently? So so yes is the answer to that question. Voyager was a great success for us. It IPO ed on New York Stock Exchange a couple of weeks ago. They raised $366,000,000, which was 25 times oversubscribed, just to give us sort of flavor of the appetite out there for investors for this at the moment. That jumped 80% on first day trade. It's come off a little bit now, but it's still valued about $2,500,000,000 and provides a very healthy read through for our NAV holding on that company and, by implication, the potential value of other portfolio companies in the portfolio.

47:33 So we have three other companies that have a stated intention to IPO, which includes iSight. Timing of that is uncertain, but the the very fact that Voyager IPO ed successfully is being carefully watched as the market. This was seen as a sort of a barometer to determine the appetite for investors. I mean, Voyager is a mature company, so it's got it's got, you know, more than a $100,000,000 in revenue growing very quickly and... But it's not profitable. So, you know, many of the companies have been really just waiting to see the first

48:15 IPO to see what comes next. So we're excited about the outlook for IPO, but we're not making any statements right now as to when when they will come. The next question was about AST Space mobile, which has been referenced that we've sold down some of our stake, making a 190% return. Are there any other holdings close to maturity that can deliver similar realizations and how easy to deploy? Well, the answer to that is yes, yes, and yes. You know, hopefully, that's come clear from my description today. We believe that many of the companies are very well positioned to provide very significant increases in value as a consequence of their their position of servicing the defense market and with these giant budgets that are focused on the type of capabilities that they have to provide.

49:13 So eyesight is 25%. So this is the next question. Eyesight is 25% of NAV. What are your expectations for its valuation trajectory, and how do you balance concentration risk? So our expectations for trajectory are off the scale. We we really believe that this business is is really very early in its growth cycle. So it's valued at less than $2,000,000,000 today, closer to 1, and we believe that this capability will drive the enterprise value of this business into many multiples of that valuation over time. And that's... The read across from the valuation of recently IPO ed as Voyager provides a...

50:06 An illumination of of what this valuation might be. So the concentration risk angle is is one that we're we're quite happy to live with. One of the reasons that we became an investment trust was the evergreen nature of the investment trust market. We, as I've mentioned in my presentation, we believe that this digital infrastructure in space is is the equivalent of creating a new Internet. We believe that the the outlook is is very significant. We believe that the companies that we're investing into are the Facebooks and Amazons and Googles of the future. We asked ourselves, you know, when was the right time to sell your holding in Amazon?

50:53 When was the right time to sell your holding in Google? And you all know the answer to that is never. And and this is the reason why we have decided on this investment trust structure. It enables us to be able to take a very long term view on on our holdings in companies like iSIG. So we will use that as a piggy bank once it has liquidity, and this will force us to be really disciplined about when we want to make new investments because we'll have to be saying to ourselves, if we sell down our holding in iSci to create cash to invest into this new company, can it provide a level of return that is better than if we left that cash within that listed environment?

51:39 So that we think is going to be the way that we're gonna operate this. This fund is going to have a disproportionate focus on a number of portfolio companies. We're really comfortable with that because we believe it's gonna deliver very significant financial returns for our investors. Okay. Next one. I invested in the company IPO, but my shares are currently sitting at a loss. Well, you know, I apologize for that. You know, we're a 2021 fund, the vast majority of the 2021 cohort of IPOs are are nursing significant losses. We thank you for continuing to to hold, and we have confidence that we're on a trajectory to to get back to that £1 initial price and to go beyond that. You know, the market's been very challenged, in the last three or four years. We believe that the portfolio has held up very well.

52:39 The companies have raised significant funding. The numbers haven't really come through in our NAV, but we believe that they will do in the in the future. And and hopefully, you know, my presentation today will give you some confidence that the the tailwinds behind the markets that we're focused on have moved into hurricane status, and that space is very, very well positioned to service the needs of defense, and that we're very well positioned to service the need for cutting edge capability that is demanded by the defense organizations. So hopefully, answers your question. Gonna take two more questions, so I'm gonna be selective about which ones, please. So just give me one second while I look through.

53:30 I will endeavor to follow-up on the email to answer all all of the questions. So let me see. Yeah. So so here's a good question. It says, half the companies that joined the listed growth fund typically gone through the accelerator or the venture funds beforehand? So the answer to that is about a third of the companies have done. And, you know, this ecosystem globally that we've built, we believe gives us a a unique advantage in this market. So the companies that the growth fund invest into that come from the the accelerator or the growth fund, These are management teams that we've got to know over a period of time.

54:26 We've got confidence in their ability to hire and retain people, to set technical and commercial targets that are achievable, and that they then go on and meet and exceed, that they can fundraise, which is a really important part of of of building out a space company that they listen to advice and take on board suggestions from investors and from the board. So we've really got to know these companies before we move them through the gears of our different funds. And the main beneficiary, you know, is our is our growth fund, the investment trust. So Zona is a great example of that. This is the company that that is the... Is building out the only GPS private network in the space environment.

55:17 And the companies that have gone through that process, we end up having a really large stake in. So we've got a significant stake in Zona. We've got a high degree of confidence in the management and their capability. They've just announced in in the last few days closing a $90,000,000 round to to now build out that constellation. So what it enables are companies in our portfolio that if they get it right and they and they develop to become the billion dollar companies that we expect them to be, that our stakes in those businesses enable us to be able to pay back the fund with, you know, single outcome from a single portfolio company. So having numerous companies in the portfolio that fit that description is what we're all about and why we're so very confident that despite the fact that we have traveled sideways for the last four years in in a challenged market, that actually going forward that we're in a very, very position...

56:16 Very well positioned with these companies, with our stakes, and with the... Being aligned with the the drivers of growth for this market. So I'll take this final question. Could you describe your typical exit strategy? Do you continue to hold the equity of a portfolio company after it goes public? So our equity... Our our exit strategy is IPO centric. We really want our companies to to IPO rather than to to be sold. In fact, companies like ISI and Diorbit and AllSpace, those that are... You know, those that we've got the most focused exposure to, we really don't want those companies to be sold. Because whilst we are likely to make a nice short term return from that, what it means is that we're not going to be able to be locked into the growth of those companies as they continue to scale and and deliver both defense and commercial and market outcomes.

57:15 So this is the reason that we that we that we prefer IPOs. We've had five portfolio companies, I think I'm right in saying, that have IPO ed. We had one last year, which was Astroscale. We've had one already this year. And as I said, we have three more waiting in the wings to come to the market. And all of the companies that are earlier stage, you know, we sit on the boards of most of these companies. We're very vocal about about why to the board. We want them to start preparing and getting ready years in advance so that, at the appropriate time, as a window opens, that they're able to step through that window and, and become public companies. So, I've nearly used the whole hour.

58:01 Hopefully, you found that of interest. We're we're more excited than ever about the outcome and the outlook for this market. We're the only fund globally listed in the space market, which gives us a sort of a level of uniqueness. We believe that we're really well positioned, particularly for defense, north of 70% of the of the NAV being driven by defense. We're well positioned for Europe, 60% in in UK and Europe, and we very much look forward to continuing on a quarterly basis to evidence that the the the position of our companies, to grow for new new contracts. Just bearing in mind that contracts that are announced now in the press, and many contracts don't get announced because they're with governments who don't want to publicize that, but those that are getting announced, you know, it does take up to a year before they then are at revenue, and then that then flows through to NAV.

59:05 So NAV for this fund is very much a sort of backward looking trading indicator, and... But we believe that that is going to get reflected. We believe our discount is going to be narrowed as investors really understand the unique proposition that we have within the space environment. Thank you for your time today. Fantastic. Mark, thanks such for a comprehensive overview, and, updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session? You should now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order Mark and the team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and that's greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of SERAPHIM SPACE INVESTMENT TRUST PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session and good afternoon to you all.