Albion Ven Cap Trust Albion Venture Capital Trust Plc: Interim Management Statement

 
TIDMAAVC 
 

ALBION VENTURE CAPITAL TRUST PLC

LEI Code: 213800JKELS32V2OK421

Interim Management Statement

Introduction

I present Albion Venture Capital Trust PLC (the "Company")'s interim management statement for the period from 1 October 2022 to 31 December 2022.

Performance and dividends

As announced on 23 February 2023, the Company's unaudited net asset value (NAV) as at 31 December 2022 was GBP66.8 million or 51.39 pence per share (excluding treasury shares). This represents a decrease of 1.51 pence per share (2.85%) since 30 September 2022.

After accounting for the second interim dividend for the year ending 31 March 2023 of 1.32 pence per share paid on 31 January 2023 to shareholders on the register on 6 January 2023, the NAV is 50.07 pence per share.

Albion VCTs Prospectus Top Up Offers 2022/23

The Company launched a prospectus top up offer of new Ordinary shares on 10 October 2022.

The proceeds of the Offer will be used to provide further resources to our existing portfolio and to enable us to take advantage of new investment opportunities being seen.

During the period from 1 October 2022 to 31 December 2022, the Company issued the following new Ordinary shares of nominal value 1 penny per share under the Albion VCTs Prospectus Top Up Offers 2022/23:

 
                                          Issue price per share 
                     Number of shares      (including costs of    Net proceeds 
Date                      issued                  issue)             GBP'000 
----------------  ----------------------  ----------------------  ------------ 
2 December 2022               10,397,152          53.8p -- 54.3p         5,506 
----------------  ----------------------  ----------------------  ------------ 
 

Portfolio

The following investments have been made during the period from 1 October 2022 to 31 December 2022:

 
New investments  GBP000s                        Activity 
---------------  -------  ---------------------------------------------------- 
                          Employee digital healthcare platform for underserved 
Peppy Health      1,207                 health and wellness areas 
---------------  -------  ---------------------------------------------------- 
Diffblue           343            AI for code testing/writing platform 
---------------  -------  ---------------------------------------------------- 
PetsApp            286                    Veterinary software 
---------------  -------  ---------------------------------------------------- 
5Mins AI           229           Bite-sized workplace learning platform 
---------------  -------  ---------------------------------------------------- 
                           Software platform automating revenue and customer 
Ramp Software      227                         forecasting 
---------------  -------  ---------------------------------------------------- 
Tem Energy         154                  Energy trading platform 
---------------  -------  ---------------------------------------------------- 
InFact Systems     80               Technology for credit assessment 
---------------  -------  ---------------------------------------------------- 
Total new 
 investments       2,526 
---------------  -------  ---------------------------------------------------- 
 
 
Further 
investments   GBP000s                          Activity 
------------  -------  --------------------------------------------------------- 
                       Provider of an online platform delivering family centric 
Healios         839     psychological care primarily to children and adolescents 
------------  -------  --------------------------------------------------------- 
Perchpeek       64                    Digital relocation platform 
------------  -------  --------------------------------------------------------- 
Brytlyt         58                  A GPU database software provider 
------------  -------  --------------------------------------------------------- 
Total 
 further 
 investments      961 
------------  -------  --------------------------------------------------------- 
 

Top ten holdings (as at 31 December 2022)

 
                                     % of 
                                      net 
                     Carrying value  asset 
Investment              GBP000's     value                           Activity 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
                                                Owner and operator of a 2 MW hydro-power scheme in 
Chonais River Hydro      4,311       6.5%                     the Scottish Highlands. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
                                              Provider of low footprint automated speech recognition 
Cantab Research                                  which can be deployed in the cloud, on premise or 
(T/A Speechmatics)       2,939       4.4%                           on device. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
                                            Operator and developer of women's health centres focusing 
The Evewell Group        2,460       3.7%                          on fertility. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
Radnor House School 
(TopCo)                  2,437       3.6%           Independent school for children aged 2-18. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
                                               Software company that enables enterprises to deploy 
Seldon Technologies      2,212       3.3%             Machine Learning models in production. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
Threadneedle 
Software Holdings                           Provider of data lineage software to enterprise customers 
(T/A Solidatus)          2,030       3.0%                      in regulated sectors. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
Gravitee TopCo (T/A 
 Gravitee.io)                 1,915   2.9%                                    API management platform. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
Elliptic                 1,913       2.9%   Provider of Anti Money Laundering services to digital 
 Enterprises                                 asset institutions. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
Healios                  1,856       2.8%   Provider of an online platform delivering family centric 
                                             psychological care primarily to children and adolescents. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
The Voucher Market       1,855       2.8%   A cloud platform that enables corporates to purchase 
 (T/A WeGift)                                digital gift cards and to distribute them to employees 
                                             and customers. 
-------------------  --------------  -----  ---------------------------------------------------------- 
 

A full breakdown of the Company's portfolio can be found on the Company's webpage on the Manager's website at https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=nHKjuPQnLJzb6IVz6Xwt63tLAfJ0HgiPad9oduf6Cc1e_a9FC8S1K2jYU6IQ9QWUKktg7CcQ-IOaJzev9icnknPswS0iwcV0szP89edvT73BdqnAWHXrI4CE4kqlbY9R www.albion.capital/funds/AAVC.

Share buy-backs

During the period from 1 October 2022 to 31 December 2022, the Company purchased 680,035 Ordinary shares at a cost of GBP343,000 including stamp duty. These shares are to be held in treasury.

It remains the Board's policy to buy back shares in the market, subject to the overall constraint that such purchases are in the Company's interest, including the maintenance of sufficient resources for investment in existing and new portfolio companies and the continued payment of dividends to shareholders.

It is the Board's intention for such buy-backs to be at around a 5% discount to net asset value, so far as market conditions and liquidity permit.

Material events and transactions after the period end

On 21 February 2023, the Company was pleased to announce that it had reached its GBP11 million over-allotment limit under its Offer which was fully subscribed and closed to further applications.

On 24 February 2023, the Board announced that, under advice, it had delayed the proposed date of the second allotment of shares in light of recent developments in the Albion managed portfolio. These developments were assessed as having no impact on the NAV of the Company.

There have been no other material events or transactions after the period end to the date of this announcement.

Further information

The Company continues to offer a dividend reinvestment scheme to existing shareholders. Details of this Scheme can be found at https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=nHKjuPQnLJzb6IVz6Xwt63tLAfJ0HgiPad9oduf6Cc3ZrjaY5sazUKhz5AF-4VLz-oIvyK003L1OF7ipugbKPItQ_2qHmInenGnkRI0EAM-pLaf9-3bVaFElsOTGQxWF www.albion.capital/funds/AAVC.

Further information regarding historic and current financial performance and other useful shareholder information can be found on the Company's webpage on the Manager's website at https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=nHKjuPQnLJzb6IVz6Xwt63tLAfJ0HgiPad9oduf6Cc0lqegYcNjD5lHtCMTeFu7p1W6Cbot8frwRfcHTWFKQthhVZ4pxN3J8zFg8iMddkr0KEj7X28EPO_0Z7ejmd4b3 www.albion.capital/funds/AAVC.

Richard Glover, Chairman

2 March 2023

For further information please contact:

Vikash Hansrani

Operations Partner

Albion Capital Group LLP

Telephone: [phone]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 02, 2023 13:00 ET (18:00 GMT)

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