Mercia Asset Management PLC (MERC.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Mercia Asset Management PLC Preliminary Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions]. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll. And if you could give back your kind attention, I'm sure the company will be most appreciative. I'd now like to hand over to CEO, Mark Payton. Good afternoon.

Thank you, and welcome, everybody, to Mercia's Preliminary Results for Financial Year 2023. Just as introduction, my name is Mark Payton, Chief Executive for Mercia and Co-Founder of Mercia. Strong focus on the life science portfolio. I manage a number of our direct investments within the Life Sciences and something like 20 years of investing across the tech space, in particular, in life sciences.

Hello. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Martin Glanfield, Mercia's CFO. I joined Mercia as employee #7 in October 2014 to IPO the business with Mark. And my background is mainly as a CFO of property listed and privately backed technology-enabled businesses in the U.K. and the U.S.

Good afternoon, everyone. Julian Viggars, Chief Investment Officer. I've been with Mercia since it acquired Enterprise Ventures back in 2016. And actually, being a fund manager across various venture funds managed by Enterprise Ventures, lastly, Mercia, the last 20 years. The first one of those way back in 2004, contained Blue Prism, where we were the first investors, invested GBP 1 million and then ultimately realizing GBP 95 million through selling down on the market.

Thank you, Julian. And just to the left here, before we go in, you see the map of the U.K. and the white dots represent the 11 offices that we have across the U.K. in key cities, which we think are critical in terms of deal origination and in terms of capital deployment, from Liverpool -- sorry, from London, from Bristol, through Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, et cetera. And that's really part of our model here is one of national deployment and actually being in the regions and the regional cities to see deals that others do not see. Just by way of highlights, both on operating basis and within the financials, GBP 1.4 billion is the assets under management we have today, and that's grown from approximately GBP 959 million. Importantly, GBP 165 million across the group, that's our funds and balance sheet has been deployed in terms of capital deployed. And again, that's up from GBP 124 million the year before. We've seen cash realizations across the group. That's funds and balance sheet continue with GBP 71 million in cash returns. I think critically here, strong cash -- unrestricted cash across the group of GBP 378 million. That's the funds and the balance sheet. So over 1/4 of our Assets under Management are in unrestricted cash. Looking to the financials. Group revenue has grown to GBP 25.9 million with an adjusted operating profit at GBP 7.6 million. As I said, strong cash, and this is on the balance sheet, which is debt-free of GBP 37.8 million. Our net asset value per share, NAV per share is static at 45.4p, which we think is a strong reflection of the portfolio and its performance in this challenging economic environment. And importantly, because of the profitable group that we have, the cash generative fund management operation which means we do not see erosion of NAV through the cost of the operation. As we continue to grow the business and its momentum, it's pleasing to note the 0.53p proposed final dividend, and that takes the full year dividend to 0.86p per share, which itself is up from 0.8p. The investment model in many respects for Mercia is simple in as far as we combine a scalable, highly scalable fund management operation with a direct investment of complementary direct investment capacity, which we turned proprietary capital. So our fund management operation is highly scalable, which is evident from these results and previous results. We also have the opportunity within these discrete assets we manage for adjacent asset class expansion, and we'll talk a little bit to that in a moment. There's a nicely recurring and predictable fee income from the fund management operation, which is profitable and importantly, cash generative. And then across to the right side of this schematic is our proprietary capital, which is focused very clearly into 3 areas: the first is to selectively look to -- and we have something like 300 venture businesses within this portfolio, to look to those businesses as they develop and co-invest with the funds as they come onto our balance sheet. And we've added 3 new investments this year. The second element is to be an investor in a number of those funds, a limited partner in LP, again, on a selective basis. And the final part of the use of this capital, our proprietary capital is to look at selective opportunities to acquire capabilities or asset manage or assets under management through our own cash resources. And that's really important. We're not going back out to the city to raise money. We have cash and cash generation to do that ourselves. And the FDC, the recent acquisition at FDC is a good example of that. Bring those 2 units of Mercia together aligned and pointing towards the regions across the U.K., you have a fully aligned group focused on capital growth and yield. I think it's important to just reflect on the markets that Mercia focuses on in the first place. And probably a way of doing that best is to look at the pools of capital we manage. So those are individuals, retail investors who are looking for tax efficient products such as VCT and EIS, public sector and here, specifically, British Business Bank, and institutional capital, typically pension funds and regional pension funds within our private equity and our debt and property group. So at retail, we are addressing approximately 2.5% of the total addressable market of GBP 19.5 billion. As one of the top performers in terms of VCT and EIS, we expect to grow that market share. As I alluded to before about adjacent asset classes, we see BPR and IHT as a potential adjacent asset class to what we're already doing and leveraging assets we look to further growth in the near to medium term. In terms of public sector, British Business Bank, there's approximately GBP 920 million available in regional venture and debt funds, and we manage about 22% of those. A number of you will be aware of the next generation of regional funds that are coming out now and will be awarded in the next 6 to 12 months. That's up from GBP 920 million to GBP 1.6 billion, and we will be aggressively bidding for those 2. And then finally, the pool of capital, institutional capital is split across our private equity group and across our debt and property group, which were acquired through the FDC recent acquisition. Again, strong regional presence, Northwest with the PE team and West Midlands, Midlands with the property and debt team, there is ample opportunity to expand both of those, not just across the regions, but nationally. So tremendous opportunity to grow the third-party funds under management of the group as we look forward to the next 6, 12, 18 months of growth. Mercia 20:20 was the strategic vision we set out 2 years ago, where we anticipated growing Assets under Management by 20% per annum over 3 years, averaged over those 3 years or perhaps better looking at it at GBP 600 million in total over those 3 years. And we find ourselves today at GBP 1.4 billion, up from GBP 959 million, and that GBP 1.6 billion in terms of achievement and [ beating ] is eminently achievable. Then the second part of that 20 is GBP 20 million in profit before tax in PBIT per annum over 3 years and averaged. Another way of looking at that is GBP 60 million over those 3 years. We're at GBP 30 million at this 2-year point and remain focused on achieving that GBP 60 million goal by the end of this financial year we've now entered. Those 2 coupled together is when we brought forward our progressive dividend policy, starting at 0.8p per share this year, growing that to 0.86p per share and expecting that dividend to grow again into this next financial year. Martin.

Thank you, Mark. I'm pleased to confirm that Assets under Management grew by approximately 50% to just over GBP 1.4 billion during the last financial year, and there were no redemptions. From a starting position of GBP 959 million on the 1st of April, we added GBP 415 million with the acquisition of FDC and a further GBP 134 million from organic fundraises and additional allocations from existing investors, which you can see on the right-hand side of this slide. We experienced a relatively small fair value reduction of GBP 29 million across all of our asset classes and distributed GBP 42 million to our fund investors, together with our PLC and VCT shareholders by dividends. All in all, it has been a very positive year for our AuM growth despite the market backdrop. This slide provides more granularity on the makeup of our AuM by asset class, investor type and funds type. Combined, these typically long-dated or evergreen funds are generating a blended fee margin of circa 2%, and we're able to invest across the U.K. under many different fund mandates that we manage. As you can see, we are diversified by investor type and asset class, and 80% of our revenue is contracted and recurring, which is a great comfort to us during these unpredictable times. The remaining 20% comes as a direct result of our investing deployment, which we are intending to increase in the current financial year, and we believe that there is much more to come in the foreseeable future. This slide is our profit loss account under International Financial Reporting Standards. And here, you can see that our top line revenues grew by -- headlined by 12% during the year, with the underlying growth being 11%. Our underlying increase in administrative expenses, which includes salaries, was 10%. So we -- even in a challenging year, we have still managed to increase our margin across the group. We've also managed to remain profitable during a period when it's been very difficult for others in our sector to do so. And therefore, our profit after tax for the year overall is a very good result that we think at GBP 2.8 million. And in a moment, Julian will talk to our -- the movements in the direct investment portfolio. Our balance sheet remains extremely strong, and we've managed to nudge up our net assets from GBP 201 million last year to GBP 203 million this year. And you can see there our strong cash position which a year ago, we were earning next to nothing in terms of bank interest. But now I'm pleased to say that we are now earning circa 4% on our cash balances, which is -- will be a significant contribution to our profitability in the current financial year. We're very focused on generating cash from our trading activities and not just take the profits. And once again, you can see here that we've generated cash from our operating activities during the year. And the cash flow statement also shows the major movements of cash flows during the year, including direct investment activity, the acquisition of FDC and the dividends that we paid to our shareholders. And finally for me, this slide shows our shareholder so, which for a small [ AIM quoted ] company is an outstanding share register. And we're also very appreciative of the 10% of our share register, which is held by individual investors. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks, Martin. So following on from Martin's AuM momentum slide. This one on the right-hand side shows the split of GBP 1.4 billion across areas of activity, but also the significant liquidity that Mark mentioned there at GBP 378 million. On the left-hand side, you can now see that we have a complete suite of investment products. We can invest from GBP 250,000, all up to GBP 10 million as business scales. So for the venture, deals, early-stage venture team can invest typically GBP 0.5 million to GBP 5 million and follow-ons. Scale-up team, which is largely our VCTs, from GBP 3 million to GBP 10 million. Our PE function, GBP 2 million to GBP 5 million equity checks. And our debt side, so the smaller sub GBP 1 million debt at round goes through our regional teams and now with GBP 10 million of -- sorry, up to GBP 10 million with FDC's national debt products. And so you can see where FDC fits, enabling those larger debt checks for us. So as always, some stats to show the scale and growth of Mercia. So deal origination always critical to us. We see a constant 200-or-so opportunities per month that we are generating. Last year, we invested a record GBP 165 million into 176 businesses and the additional GBP 40 million between this year and last year was deployed mainly across our National Venture and debt side. And again, our debt team was especially busy 20-or-so more businesses led to across the regions in this year. The last line in this chart shows our direct activity and that shows that we were very similar in many ways to FY '22. But with 3 new deals added to the portfolio, and those were Nova Pangaea, Axis Spine and Uniphy. Okay. So this is the year in numbers. It's a little bit more complex than the previous year, so I'll go through it in a little bit more detail. So on the left-hand side, the brought forward value of GBP 120 million, to which we add a further GBP 21 million, again, within that GBP 6 million for those new deals. GBP 4 million of cash realized. The next column is the realized gains and losses. We'll come back to that in a minute. Fair value movements across the year, stable, largely flat, GBP 1.2 million, and that leaves us with the portfolio value of GBP 137 million that Martin was talking about. So a little bit greater detail on the realizations. So starting off with Intechnica Holdings on the left-hand side, the bottom row. So the brought forward value of that business was GBP 14.4 million. And if you recall, in April, we split that out into, Netacea and Intechnica. In our interims, we appended a value of [ GBP 12.2 million ] to Netacea, [ GBP 2.2 million ] to Intechnica. Then in February of this year, we sold Intechnica for GBP 4 million. That's the number there and that generates the GBP 1.8 million of gain you see in the second to last row. Sense BioDetection was also an asset that we had really high hopes for. Unfortunately, we sold that pre-Christmas in an accelerated process advised by Goldman Sachs to a business called Sherlock Biosciences in a share-to-share deal, that unfortunately generated a GBP 2.6 million of loss. You can see that number again towards the bottom of that chart. Also fair value dividends. So we were GBP 5.6 billion at the first half -- since fallen back [ to GBP 1.2 million ] overall. But that is stable, and we think a good performance in this current market. Now first of all, I'll explain the second half. Largely the GBP 4.6 million number in there was the result of us writing down edge case games and W2 in the second half, and they now fall out of our top 20. Now Netacea, also, we've written down by GBP 3.5 million. You can't see that number actually. It's -- you get to it by summing the [ GBP 8.7 million ] Netacea fair value movement and the [ GBP 12.2 million ] number against Intechnica in that column. And again, that's really as a result of software multiples declining across the board, not balanced in this particular case, by growth within the business. Now that was balanced and I think in a very positive way. So we have 5 positive fair value movements. The biggest 2 was across our mobile games businesses, Invincibles and VirtTrade. And those really are simply a function of the growth in revenues on those businesses. Alongside those Warwick and Eyoto made a significant tech and commercial progress and accompanied by new third-party funding rounds. So in overall, I think despite tough conditions, the vast majority of our portfolio have made real progress in the year. Okay. So I'm just going to explain a little bit more about our valuation methodology. Clearly, first and foremost, it follows the IFRS guidelines. But importantly, we spent an awful lot of time carefully considering each asset. We do think that the price that someone else puts on these assets to be the best approximation to value. Clearly, we then calibrate. What that really means is sense-check those values based on the passage of time, but also against actual progress, results, milestones and of course, market multiples. And that green piece of the pie, so blue, turquoise, accounts for 58% of our GBP 137 million. Now the bulk of the remainder of the portfolio is valued as a fundamental assessment of enterprise value by us or indeed by third parties. And again, that uses market multiples and comparables versus trading. Now we only have 1 listed asset, which are MyHealthChecked. That's why clearly bid price. And the green in there is cost, and that represents a couple of the new assets that we've most recently put onto our balance sheet. Thanks, Mark. So again, I guess, first of all, overall neutral in terms of fair value movements in a tough year, but a lot of strong positives. So I guess the themes are that the manufacturing assets, kind of deeper assets and medical assets we've made some real progress, as has our games businesses, and that's been balanced really by the software business within the portfolio that have been under some pressure. So I'm just going to call out a couple of these. So nDreams is our VR developer. And again, that is going very well. Lots of momentum in this business now. So 6 games to be launched across the course of the next 12 months. In fact, 1 was released on PS VR 2 yesterday. And $12 million of new deals signed since April. We're now up to 230 people across 4 studios and there's a lot of positive momentum in the market as well as PlayStation VR 2 launch recently. We're going to see a new quest headset in the back of this year 2023. So we got a lot of positive momentum there. Let us see it, I'm just going to call out again, just very briefly, cybersecurity, both in API -- API management, moving into a really interesting area called defensive AR as well, we think, spun out, as I've said, of Intechnica. We've seen a little lowering of growth, particularly in the last 6 months from the U.S. But actually, recently, we've seen some IRR progress in the last quarter and some interesting partnerships developing. Okay. So in terms of this slide, just to call out VirtTrade and Invincibles. So both mobile games developers. Both own their own intellectual properties. So they have created their own games. And in the case of VirtTrade, that discards the universe and everything. And in the case of Invincibles, it's a franchise, now an annual franchise called Soccer Manager. Importantly, we have 2 new games due out from Invincibles over the course of the next 12 months. And a new look and feel for Soccer Manager 24, which will be out in September. I just want to also call out Warwick. So Warwick is our flat speaker, very likely, high-quality speaker system. And we announced the very first OEM deal very recently. And that's a result of 3 or 4 years of efforts from the business. So the speaker system has been nominated on the highest spec model of this particular OEM on that 2025 card and we are expecting revenues to come through during 2024. The momentum doesn't stop there actually because we have 3 other POC deals in operation with 3 different OEMs, which hopefully will follow that on Warwick. Okay. So this slide simply shows that our balance sheet is performing well, tracking at 13% IRR. It also shows our record of realizing on average at 50% above carrying value exit. What does that mean? Does it mean we're conservative in terms of our valuations? Does it mean that some of these assets are hard to value. I think it certainly means that, certainly, some of our assets are attractive to the buyers who are willing to pay strategic prices. And those are perhaps above the ones that you normally see by applying valuation metrics. So overall, I'm pleased with progress in a tough environment, and it shows the resilience of our portfolio and the fact that it is well diversified across sectors. Mark.

Thanks, Julian. So the last 3 slides and just before I go into the last 3 slides, can I remind people we are -- we will be delighted to take any questions that you may have. We will look to answer all of those questions as they come through. As mentioned, you can see our reach across the U.K. through the various offices we have. And we very much see ourselves as a leading domestic U.K. impact investment. What I mean by impact investor is that our institutional capital that we manage is actually by their impact allocations as they look to support the regions, the regional businesses, we have tax-efficient capital EIS and VCT, which is created by the government to get capital into equity gap financing, and of course, the public set of British Business Bank is creating and managing these funds again to address equity gaps. And based on the fact that we find ourselves in the top quartile, often the top 10% of investors out there in these categories, we see ourselves as a profitable commercial impact investor. And the pace of growth of Mercia can be seen in that bottom right corner, capital deployed over the 3 years has grown from GBP 94 million to GBP 124 million to GBP 165 million this year, so up over 30% each year, and we expect that to continue. And the reason why that's important is that, as Martin has said, over 80% of our income that comes is deferred, and we have sites on that coming through our management of our funds. The remaining 20% relates to our investment activities, arrangement fees, deployment fees, et cetera. So as capital increases in deployment, so does the fee income on that basis. And just in terms of the pace of our growth, you can see the size of the portfolio now. We have 140 people at Mercia, and aligned share of those dedicated to support into finding unearthing these deals and taking them forward. Majority of those deals split between ventures and debt. And we're also an active investor in the university spinout over our time, over our journey since foundation, we backed something like 74 university spinout of that number, the 567 there in total portfolio, approximately 5% of those are university spin-outs. And they're very important to us, the university spin-outs, but actually a minority of the activity that we take part in. And our focus actually for this year, I'm hoping is evident from the presentation given from Julian, Martin and I, specifically relating to the third-party funds under management and our balance sheet. In terms of the third-party funds, we see a tremendous amount of organic expansion across all pools of capital we manage, be it retail, be it public sector, be it institutional, and we expect that growth to come through in the next 6, 12, 18 months. With that growth goes a continuation of our progressive dividend policy. The focus on what we see as a strong maturing direct investment portfolio is where our cash realizations, of course, come from making that evergreen and continuing its evergreen journey. Our own cash resources can then be used selectively if we think it's right for acquisition of capabilities, further assets under management. But that would be within our own free cash resources. We wouldn't be raising money for that. So why hold a share in Mercia? Why invest in Mercia? All 3 of us are material investors in Mercia across the group, employees and the Board, we own 17% of Mercia. So we see full alignment to the other owners of Mercia. But in short, you can see the long-term revenue visibility, the sustainable, profitable growth of the group and importantly, this evergreen balance sheet. And what we haven't discussed today is the modest capital outlays that go into these businesses on our direct investment portfolio, and that's really important in terms of syndication risk, et cetera. If a chill wind comes through another stop investing, all of our direct investments, we hold a direct positioning as well as the funds positioning. We can support a majority of our direct investments on the balance sheet going forward. Other reasons for buying a share in Mercia or holding a share in Mercia, 100% of our third-party funds, that's over GBP 1.2 billion of the GBP 1.4 billion we have under management are in closed-end funds. They are not subject to redemption and returns to the capital in that respect. Across that group, across the fund management activity, we have a blended 2% fee margin approximately. I've discussed the organic funds expansion opportunity I think also critically, and I'm hoping you picked that up from Julian talking about the likes of nDreams, Warwick Acoustics, et cetera, is that we see strong growth in the direct investments. And therefore, when you see such a strong discount on a NAV per share basis to the direct investments, we think there's true value there. In terms of risk profile of the group, GBP 378 million in free cash across the group, GBP 38 million of which on the balance sheet on a debt-free basis is a strong position for us that face forwards were both building positions within existing portfolio as well as adding to new businesses going forward. We see our direct investment approach and as strong the portfolio as resilient. And importantly, as we go into the new year, into this new financial year, momentum continues. GBP 23 million already of fund inflows. We're about to close another EIS fund. We've announced their fundraising within our VCT fund. We have top-ups from the BBB regional funds that we already manage. And that doesn't that discount all the new mandates that we'll be going after over the next 12 to 18 months. So thank you all for your attention and for those that are shareholders for your continued support, and we'd be delighted to take any questions that you may have.

That's great. Mark, Martin, Julian, thank you so much for updating investors this afternoon. [Operator Instructions] I'd just like to remind you the recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via the investor meet company dashboard. And Mark, if I could please invite you to open up the Q&A tab, you'll see you've had a number of questions from investors throughout your presentation. So thank you to everybody for your engagement. If I may, Mark, just ask you to read out the questions and then give a response where it's appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Perfect. Thank you very much, [ Mike ]. Just stay tuned. So what I've done, as for those who joined us before is I've tried to see them and the 3 of us will sort of try and answer them. I've seen all questions, and we've had a number of questions ahead of this as well. So I'll start off actually on the corporate -- I put a section on corporate in this regard. Martin, 1 question is when will the dividend be paid?

Yes, I can answer that question. So on the very front page about RNS this morning, down at the bottom of the first page, you'll see that if the proposed dividend is approved by shareholders at the company's Annual General Meeting on the 21st of September, then it will be paid on the 27th of October to shareholders on the register at close of business on the 29th of September.

Brilliant. Thank you very much. And another question relates to the discount on our net asset value per share and have we considered a share buyback to try and narrow that discount.

Yes, we have, and we never roll anything out. And if I may, I'd like to just come at this answer from a number of angles. First of all, we fully understand the concept and the positive impact on EPS, NAV per share and dividend per share. And I'll give you, if I may, a worked example. So in our case, if we were to say use GBP 10 million of our current cash to at a share price as say 25p to buy back Mercia's shares, that would enable us to buy back 40 million Mercia shares, [ at ] about 446 million shares. But that would represent 26% of our cash gone from our balance sheet against an uncertain economic backdrop, whilst the increase in NAV per share would only be 2p, which is 4%, and the increase in dividend per share would be 0.8p. By comparison, our balance sheet portfolio has a current IRR of 13% and we have made 3 successful earnings-enhancing acquisitions from our liquidity, our own liquidity, largely. So in our current view, the risks associated with 26% of our cash, having gone from our balance sheet, that risk is too great for us to take. When what we need also to do is not just past the going concern test with our ounces every year. But also, we need to ensure that we retain enough cash runway to continue to support our direct investments. And typically, we like to run with 2 years of investment runway. I'd like, if I may, also to give a practical example of why we don't believe that share buybacks are in the best interest of Mercia shareholders. As some of you may be aware that over the last 12 months or so, IP Group has spent GBP 35 million of their shareholders' money on a share buyback program. Despite that, from the last 12 months, IP Group share price is down 20%. And they now have a loan facility in place upon which they're paying interest effectively on this GBP 35 million that has gone from their balance sheet. So not only do we not think that at the moment, share buybacks work in practice. We think that GBP 10, I've just given you the GBP 10 million, I just give you an example, that we do have better uses for that money on behalf of our shareholders. And finally, we do believe in returns to shareholders, and that is why we enacted our progressive dividend policy a couple of years ago. So we are making returns to shareholders every year, but just not in the form of a share buyback.

Great. Thank you very much, Martin. There's another question on capital allocation priorities. I'll just pick this up. So the particular individuals asked, are your priorities in order of preference, existing investments, new investments, dividends, buybacks. Well, I hope you heard Martin's point on buybacks, so we would drop that one off the scale. Existing investment absolutely the #1 priority. New investments, of course, we can turn on or off, and that's the flexible element of it. And we have a commitment with our profitable fund management group to a progressive dividend. So probably would switch that to existing investments, the progressive dividend and new investments. And as Martin has quite eloquently pointed out, buybacks, we do not believe is the right thing for the group. Another question is asked, why move the AGM from Henley-in-Arden to London?

Yes, I'm happy to answer that question. So I mean, in our very early days, we did start having our AGM in London, and then we moved it up to Henley. But I think we believe that it's now time to perhaps move the AGM around the country because obviously, our shareholders are all around the country, particularly our individual shareholders. And so as part of our sort of engagement program with our shareholders, and we have had requests from a number of individual shareholders who would like us to return to London. And bearing in mind most of our institutional shareholders are London-based we've decided to come back to London for this year's AGM. And in terms of the venue, it will be at the [ lawyers Reed Smith ] and the details of the venue are at the back of the RNS and of course, will be published in the notice of AGM, which is in the back of the annual report, which will be posted to shareholders and on our website on the 28th of July.

Thank you, Martin. Another point here asked whether Ray Chamberlain is included in the 17% in terms of ownership against employees and the Board? And yes, he is. So Ray is a cofounder with me actually within Mercia. Another question says -- or it's really a statement says a PBIT of GBP 60 million looks a stretch when you're up GBP 30 million. We've always said that it's lumpy because it's our direct investments, we're hoping you've seen that actually our direct investments are in good shape, and we expect continued performance to come through that. So we continue to be focused on achieving that GBP 60 million. Another question asked, why has the share price performance been so poor over the past few years? I mean, we -- I'm sure every chief exec that everybody talks to says the share price is too low. But we had a number of unfortunate exposures, if you like. We had a high proposed shareholder for instance, that was a forced seller, that hurt our share price and a number of other incidents over the time. All we can do is the 3 of us is focus on deploying shareholders' funds into funds and into investments that we think will provide a strong return. I hope that the share price will catch up with us and do events like this to communicate the positive progress that we are doing. Just moving on to direct investments, Julian, 1 question asks, are you planning any direct investment exits?