Molten Ventures Plc (GROW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Molten Ventures Plc Annual Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so, it needs to be available via your Investor Meet company dashboard. Before we begin, if I may, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Martin Davis. Good morning, sir.

Good morning, Jake, and good morning, everybody, and we are very pleased to be able to share with you the Molten Ventures Plc annual results for financial year 2023. We are really pleased to be able to use this platform to reach out to a much broader group of investors than the traditional institutional investors. And this is something that's very important part of our business and part of the reason they're company listed. And so we're very pleased that we can share a little bit more detail and I'll obviously take some questions from, as I said, a much broader group of customers, particularly retail customers. I'm joined today by Ben Wilkinson, our CFO, who a number of you would have been seen. I guess, the one caveat, I would say, at the top end of this presentation is that we've got a very broad group of retail investors, some that know us very well, some that know us less well, some of them are more professional investors, some of them are more casual investors. And as a result of that, what we've tried to do with the deck here is to bring out the salient points across the board so that we can cover as many points to as much of a broader audience as possible. So with that in mind, we will move through the deck reasonably quickly. We will try to stay away from too much detailed technical detail. But again, we're very happy to take that in the questions, if you wish. But I just wanted to provide that caveat because I'm very conscious that we do have a very broad group of retail investors. So by way of summary, last year, and for those that caught up with us at the midyear point at our interims in November, the story will be very familiar with you, particularly in the first half. And what we've seen in the second half is a great deal of stabilization, particularly around valuations but also the macroeconomic challenges that really peaked at the back end of last year but seem to be stabilizing. And the changes that we made to our model, the slight adaptations we made to our model over the last year, we're really starting to see a lot of results. And so therefore, the year is kind of in 2 halves. A quite significant decrease in the first half of last year. Stock markets were down heavily, and we took a lot of the pain, so to speak, in the first half, which is why we had a 17% decrease in the NAV in the first half. But as I said, we've seen that stabilize quite significantly in the second half with a 2% decrease over the half, and that's excluding the impact of FX. I think the important thing to remember, though, is that despite the change in movement over the 2 halves, we have a very consistent and diligent approach to valuations, and this has continued since the company is -- indeed, it's been run many years but since the company has been listed over the last year, we have a significant number of changes, but the approach has been very, very consistent. And I think that's something very important. Ben will talk about our valuation process. We've applied an entirely consistent approach to valuations over the period, as you might expect. And also because we probably dropped slightly less than the wider market, the portfolio is very resilient because we have over 70 companies across different stages -- at different stages and different sectors. So we've got a very diverse portfolio, and that allows us to weather some of these ups and downs, particularly in particular sectors quite well. The underlying portfolio performance continued to be strong. The revenue, the businesses, the demand for the problems that our companies are solving in our portfolio continues to be significant, enterprises, particularly in this tough environment, economic environment, are looking to increase efficiency. They're looking to manage costs. They're looking to manage their data. And as a result of that, a lot of those problems are -- companies are using the latest technology to deal with. We've seen a reasonably impressive growth, 40% over the last calendar year, but anticipated 65% revenue growth. So in an environment -- quite tough economic environment, that just demonstrates the importance of what our companies are performing and what they're delivering. Despite a very difficult and illiquid market for raising capital over the last 12 months, our Tier 1 assets have continued to be able to attract capital as they would through any stage of the cycle. And in fact, over GBP 1 billion has been raised by portfolio companies over the last 12 months, and we've seen quite significant large raises, particularly in companies like Aiven, CoachHub and Ledger and Thought Machine. And that's very encouraging for us and I think also reinforces the methodology that we use for valuing companies and gives us confidence that the valuations we have for those companies are the correct ones in the markets. However, we've also looked at cash preservation in the second half. It's been very important for us to preserve the plc cash despite the portfolio being very well funded, over 80% of the Core has 18 months plus cash runway, which is very important. So we can get some visibility on what cash we need. And despite that, because realizations have been down inevitably in the tough environment, we've still managed to deliver GBP 48 million of realizations, but the realizations market is tough. And as a result, of that, we have continued to preserve a plc cash, and we'll talk maybe a little bit more about that later on. The other thing that we've been doing over the last year has been accelerating the work we've been on for a number of years, which is building third-party assets. And third-party assets are important for our model because they enable us to build income, to offset our costs to shareholders, but also they enable us to provide additional capital and that ensures that we can stay in the market. And our EIS and VCT funds, which continued to raise good capital over the year, we already manage around GBP 400 million in those 2 sectors. That additional capital allows us to stay in the market. We're also very pleased that we managed to secure a cornerstone for our Fund of Funds program. We don't invest in C funds directly, and I'll come on to that in a minute. But we've been able to syndicate that program because it's such an exciting program, and that also bring realizations to us and enabled us to continue to expand that program. We've talked at the end of last year about raising our debt across the business. We thought that roughly 10% is about the right element for us of the NAV, although that's not fixed. That's what we were looking to do over the last financial year, and we have managed to close that GBP 150 million debt, GBP 90 million, which is in term debt, and GBP 60 million of a revolving facility, which we currently haven't drawn. And finally, and absolutely critically important for us is that we continued on our ESG road map. Now we believe that investing in the right companies and having strong ESG credentials, it's actually about running a better business. It's not about ticking boxes or getting any green stamps. It's much more about just running better businesses. And it's a way that we've run our company for a very long time, but we've been able to codify that and meet a number of public requirements in those areas and standards, which is very encouraging for us. But I think also equally important is that we've spent a lot of time over the last financial year in extending that into our portfolio companies. So those earlier stage ones to make sure that they're growing in the right way. And for those later-stage companies that they constantly improve themselves and have the processes and checks and balances to demonstrate that they are growing to a very strong ESG standard because as I said before, we do believe that, that is actually a better way to run companies and to build long-term sustainable value. So those are the summary over the year. I think probably again for those that are not that familiar with our model, I probably just want to spend a couple of minutes talking about our model. And we talk about our model being a resilient model. And now I think part of the reason for that is on the slide on the bottom right-hand side, the stage of venture that we invest in is something that's very important. We were not seed investors. We do that through our Fund of Funds, although we can deploy third party capital. We do that through our Fund of Funds but early, growth stage is really where we have most of our investments traditionally in. And by that, we mean really Series A plus B and C. And that's the period when the companies we invest in tend to grow at their greatest pace and where the returns tend to be. We look for particular proof points that companies are going to come out of that early stage and grow rapidly. And those proof points might be growth of revenue. They might be global customers. They could be technology. But by this stage, most of the technology risk is already taken because they've proved their technology. It could be in heavily regulated environments like [ HealthTech ]. It could be about licenses or about regulatory approvals. But we look for those proof points about when companies are going to accelerate very rapidly. And that's when we invest because of that particular stage, we're not saying later stage or exit companies are exciting that you can get good returns there, but the really outsize returns tend to be during that growth spurt. And that's where companies need additional support. They need capital. They need experience. They need people next to the founders, helping them to grow their businesses. And that's really the key of what we do and why we're different to other venture firms because that's what we focus on. We sit on all of the Boards of our companies and we nearly always lead the rounds. We always look to lead the rounds. So therefore, we can help them to grow at the right pace. And I think that's something that's very important about our model. It does mean that these companies are -- had a degree of resilience in downturns. If you look at these companies, they tend to be -- and our average across the Core is they have gross margins of 65%, and they're growing revenue at anywhere between 50% and 100% per year. And those companies that are growing that quickly that very high margin actually very rarely go to 0, but they have real growing issues they need to deal with, and that's where we provide support to them and how we help to manage them. But our model of deal flow getting into spotting these companies early is very important. We look at thousands of companies per year. The fund is very tight. We end up looking at anywhere from 15 to 20 to 30 a year. So the top of the funnel is tight. And by the time they come to us, we're very clear about the potential and how we can focus on those. I think the last thing I'd say about our model is unlike maybe the traditional GP/LP venture model is that we are very much a portfolio play. And when people invest in our business, they're investing in all 70 companies, and we want to get return out of all of them. We're not happy to see any of them go to 0. We do accept that not all of them will be 10 to 20x our size. We do understand that. But what we want to do is really focus on those that are growing rapidly, and -- but also make sure that we get our returns from all of our companies. And so therefore, with our platform team and our venture operations team, we're able to monitor support all of our companies, and that's something that's very important with our model. So I'm happy to take any questions at the end on that, but I think, obviously, we should get into the results. And maybe if I could hand over to you, Ben, if you could take us through the highlights.

Yes. Thank you, will do. So here, we have the highlights for the full year. We'll get into some more detail as we go through the presentation. As Martin alluded to, on how this breaks down in really a story of 2 halves for the year with a lot more significant write-downs in the first half and then the second half showing stabilization because we took those write-downs early. The end position is a gross portfolio value of GBP 1.37 billion, and that translates into our balance sheet once accrued carry is taken off that number. And so we have a net number going to the balance sheet. We then add on the cash that we've invested in the year and the cash proceeds from realizations, reflecting the portfolio value in the sense of cash invested is obviously an increase and then realizations come off that portfolio value. And then on the balance sheet itself, we'll have the cash position at the year-end of GBP 23 million. And that's reflective of the fact that we expanded our debt facility in the year, where we look to increase our facilities in line with the size of the portfolio, and we really look to debt as being a bridge to future realizations. We'll touch on the cadence of realizations as we go into some further slides. But expanding that debt facility was important to give us additional cash resources and liquidity. And we have that drawn as a GBP 90 million term debt, and the remaining GBP 60 million of that GBP 150 million facility is a revolving credit facility, which is currently undrawn. So when you take into account the component parts of the balance sheet, which is the fair value of the assets plus the cash and the drawn debt, we have a net asset position of just under GBP 1.2 billion at the period end, which is down from GBP 1.4 billion as of a year ago. And as I said, there's some movement, most of those adjustments were taken in the first half. The GBP 1.2 billion translates to a NAV per share of GBP 7.80. This is slightly higher than what we put into the trading statement that we issued in April. And so small movements, we had GBP 7.75 . This is translating to GBP 7.80 once the final adjustments have been bought through after the audit process. And those fair value movements in the year at a high level translate to a gross portfolio movement of minus 16%. And that's the first year where we've had reductions since we've been public and following several years of gains, but it's important that we recognize the movements in the markets first seen in the public markets and translate those into the value of the portfolio that we hold. So that in turn translates to a loss on the income statement for the year of GBP 243 million. And the other component parts of the income statement, which we'll want to touch on relates to our net cost base, and this is net -- income being net of costs, and we've always targeted this to be less than 1% of net asset value. But as we grow the income base, this is reducing down substantially and is currently at 0.1% just under. And so we'll talk about that in the context of building out third-party capital as well. Overall, that leaves us with GBP 1.7 billion of AUM. The majority of the non-balance sheet AUM is coming from the EIS and VCT funds, but we are expanding with syndicated Fund of Funds and other strategies where we'll build AUM in the coming year as well. So I can give a quick run through and a snapshot of the highlights. If I take us to the next slide, really, this is the picture of the first half versus second half movements. What we've done here is a bridge on the very far left hand side, you'll see the gross portfolio value as of March '22. Again, as I mentioned, cash invested goes as an addition to that. So in the first half, GBP 112 million invested and substantially less in the second half will come to the realizations for the first half of the year, GBP 13 million come off that number. And then we get into the 3 blocks that we've highlighted there, which are the moving parts of the fair value. So the first one, GBP 31 million increase in that first half of the year is the increase in the portfolio, and then the decreases we took just under GBP 300 million with the decreases across the portfolio in that first half of the year, as I mentioned, really reflecting those changes in the comparable values. It's important to recognize and note that during the FY '21 period when technology valuations were increasing substantially and our companies were raising capital in those environments and increased valuations, we were being senseful about the fact that would stay true to our valuation methodology and underpinning that is really wanting to see the commercial traction of those businesses before we increased their valuations. And so in many cases, we're holding those companies at discounts to where they raise capital waiting for the increased revenue to come through and then anchoring that in multiples that are more reflective of the previous 5 to 10-year averages. And that paid off in the sense that we weren't right taking the asset values all the way up. And therefore, as we had to adjust them down. In the first half of the year, we didn't have to adjust them quite as much. And the other part of that is that we were very quick to do so, recognizing that investors need an anchor for true valuations. And so we will always try and be reflecting those as quickly as we can, and that's what we've done here. So the combination of the ups and the downs in that period led to GBP 164 million of reduction, 17% before the impacts of FX. And then we did have some FX support coming through, so minus 12% for the first half of the year. So just taking that into the second half, same movement characteristics in the sense of the investments all substantially less invested in that second half, GBP 26 million versus GBP 112 million. As Martin alluded to there, as we preserve the capital, and that's been a conscious decision. And then we had realizations of GBP 35 million. So on a net basis, actually bringing in more capital than we deployed. And then moving to the aggregate movements, we have just under GBP 80 million of increases in the portfolio. This has really been driven by the growth rate that we talked about, where the companies have grown. 40% in the Core as a weighted average in the year. That drives on a constant currency basis, increases in those valuations of those companies. But we have still taken a very hard lens on the companies in the portfolio. And we've taken down to what we feel that they're relevant. And we took 2 specific downs in the Core in this period, which led to the majority of this GBP 108 million of reduction. So on a net basis between the GBP 80 million increase and the GBP 108 million reduction, we've moved it down a further 2% before the FX. And actually, in the second half of the year, the FX moved slightly the other way and therefore, ended up with a minus 5% on the full period. So those -- that really bridges us to that GBP 1.37 billion and the total year being a minus 16% reduction in the value of the portfolio. Martin, I'll pass to you to touch on the deployment and the cadence.

Yes. Thanks very much, Ben. And I think Ben has already alluded to how much the deployment, the GBP 138 million we did over the year, and how that was very much skewed to the first half. Indeed, we actually realized more in the second half that we deployed, and I think that's a very good thing in the current environment, particularly around preserving plc cash. But I think the interesting thing is that the entry points I'd like to show on this slide is I think the first thing is the overall growth and development of the business over the last 6 or 7 years. And although I think when you look at the bottom left-hand chart, capital deployed by deal stage, I think there is a view that this has been a really low year across the board. But if you take out the individual financial year '19, the GBP 96 million that we deployed as a one-off secondary into Earlybird. And actually, you take out a lot of the follow-on that we deployed in financial year 2022, which I think everyone would agree was a very big year, and that was really where we were putting a lot of capital into our existing companies. If you take that out, there's actually a much more level and smooth growth that we've seen in deployment over the last 6 or 7 years. And I think that will continue. And what I think demonstrates is that despite the fact the market has been very highly volatile. Actually, by sticking to our investment discipline we have been remarkably consistent, growing gradually year-by-year, not getting too carried away, but also not shutting up shop, which I think is very important in this particular environment. If you look at the charts on the right-hand side, stages of investment, primary versus follow-on, the mix of backing our businesses versus our existing businesses hasn't changed that much. It's been remarkably consistent over the last 5 or 6 years. And I think, again, that shows that we're willing to put money into our existing companies where we can double down and reward success but also go back into the market to continue to invest in new companies. The bottom right-hand chart, I think, shows probably the biggest difference that we've seen in the environment over the last 12 months. And that is that because liquidity has been tight because particularly in the first half, there's difficulty working out returns with interest rates unclear where they're going to peak, that has inevitably forced us into slightly earlier stage investing. And I think that's perfectly normal in this stage of the cycle. And indeed, I think most shareholders would want us to be doing that. We've not been placing that many big bets in later-stage businesses. What we've been doing is doing many more earliest -- slightly earlier stages. And I think the advantage of our model is that we can use EIS/VCT capital to deploy into those assets. So we can get into those exciting assets a little bit earlier, possibly, but using third-party capital, which preserves the plc capital but that also provides us with vital deal flow because those companies that we're investing in now at a slightly earlier stage, those ones that are successful in 2 to 3 years' time, that's when the plc will want to be doing their growth rounds. And so by being in them early, that gives us much greater profitability. And I think that's something that the numbers show reflect very accurately what we're seeing in the market. And I think that's quite helpful. When you look at the -- on the next slide, the actual companies that we're investing in, again, I would say, relatively consistent. Now there has been a skew over the last 12 months or so towards enterprise technology, probably a little bit around deeptech and hardware, I think. We've seen that a little bit over the last 12 months. And that's for a number of reasons. Firstly, obviously, with the cost of living crisis, discretionary spending questions, some of the more consumer-focused businesses are harder to value. But certainly, the enterprises that have been building up their balance -- strengthening their balance sheet during the COVID period are spending money on what's important to them, on solving the problems that are most important to them, as I had mentioned earlier on. So for example, with vaultree, whether that's around cyber or indeed around Altruistiq around building carbon capture and managing their carbon moving forward, around CoachHub where businesses are putting more money into remote working that provides remote training and coaching. So those areas that we're seeing quite a lot of investment in, predominantly from enterprises that unsurprisingly is skewing a little bit our enterprise focus over the last 12 months. But I think the encouraging thing for us is when we look back over the last 12 months, there's a good mix of new businesses, primary investing, following our wins, but also -- and the exiting question is obviously something that's in the forefront of many people's minds reason tough environment right now. And maybe I'll ask Ben to talk a little bit about cash realization returns and certainly track record, which is also important. So maybe, Ben, if you could take us through that?

Yes. Thank you. As Martin said there, it's a very important part of our model. The consistency of returns when you look at them across time is really what we want to point to because venture capital is a long-term investment. We average about 5 to 7 years in companies. We're building a portfolio which mix these vintages, but we're targeting returns we say, 20% through the cycle. And we've always had fair questions on what does the cycle mean. And I think It's fair to say that at the moment, we're in the downswings of one. And so this is a good time to show how the portfolio performs across time and also the resilience that we've been able to demonstrate with the very deliberate decisions to build our portfolio across technology subsectors and different stages of the company's life cycles. And so you will see on the chart on the left-hand side, these are the income statement returns that we've delivered over the last 6, 7 years. The target return is the orange bar that gives you a sense of where that 20% return would sit. And then we've actually delivered even with the current downturn for the year, average returns of 35% or above that target. And that's obviously pleasing for us to see. But as you can view from the chart, there's a degree of lumpiness around those returns and very strong in some years and this year down. So it's taken in the whole. That's the important picture just as it is with the broader portfolio and how that performs rather than focusing too narrowly on individual companies, although we all like to do that because the companies are exciting, but looking at the aggregate performance in the aggregate portfolio is what's important. The other aspect that's fundamental to our model, particularly as we can recycle the capital that we realize, is the right-hand chart, which shows the realizations we've delivered over that same period of time. And we demonstrate a target bar there in the orange, which is 10%, and that's 10% per annum, but possibly even more so than the fair value returns, realizations are very lumpy, and we don't exactly know when they will come in any one in particular company. What we do know is that many of our portfolio companies are constantly having conversations that they have inherent underlying IP, which is attractive to buyers. And the majority of our returns have come from M&A rather than through the IPO markets and process. And you'll see here that the cash realization is now in aggregate over the last 6, 7 years is just under GBP 490 million. This past period where the markets will be quieter. We've delivered GBP 48 million back, which is 3% of the opening portfolio. But in aggregate, over that period of time, cash realizations are above our target at 18%. What I'll do now is just show you a snapshot of those returns and how we think about them from that portfolio perspective. So this is the same bucket of returns that we just looked at in aggregate. And the way that they tend to split out is that on the far left-hand side, we'll have some that go to 0. This is a bunch of capital, and therefore, a risky asset class in that sense, and you can have 0, but this just demonstrates why the portfolio approach and the portfolio construction and the work of us the managers is important to create the right vintages and to look at the risk profiles of these companies and see them in the aggregate as much as in the individual is relevant. So on the left-hand side, you see those 0s have been 12% of our invested capital. And that gives you a sense, therefore, of the inherent downside protection that we have with building a portfolio but also by investing in a share structure, which gives us downside protection called a preference share and that effectively means that we can get our capital out first once we've invested in the company. And therefore, the valuation of the business can fall quite substantially before we have our invested capital at risk. Looking at the other cohorts of this chart on the far right-hand side. This is the cohort where 3x plus returns are delivered. This is effective where our original investment decisions come to fruition. This is the upside that we see, the 10-plus x returns that are capable if these companies deliver on their original investment thesis, which is to capture a large market share on a global basis with technology, which is disrupting existing markets or indeed building new markets. And the majority of our returns in terms of proceeds, GBP 367 million, is coming from 43% of our invested capital. And I think that skew is very much representative of venture capital returns. What may be slightly different is the middle 2 cohorts where we'll have some return on our money, just under 1x at a loss, but some return on our capital. And then in the 1x to 3x, where we have more than 1x return on our capital, but it's not the type of return we're really investing in, in the first place, which is the far right-hand side. And this is where the majority of the management time is spent -- where we spend time where the company is really making sure that we find good homes for those businesses and return some of that investment proceeds so that we can recycle those proceeds into new opportunities. And you'll see there that we have about GBP 100 million of returns proceeds over 18% in the less than 1 box and 27% in the 1 to 3x of our invested capital. So I think that chart gives a very good snapshots of how view of the portfolio returns and why looking at the portfolio in aggregate is a skill of the manager, but also fundamentally very important to venture capital and risk management. So perhaps with that, Martin, I'll hand back to you to cover off the income statement side and how we've been building that up.

Yes. Thanks, Ben. Look, I think I just probably want to highlight a couple of points here. I do want to leave time for questions we see quite a few coming in. And I think the key thing here is that we are building third-party capital, and we want to build income, we want to attract fees, and we want to manage our own costs so we can provide this investment return in the best possible way for shareholders. And we've had now at the moment about GBP 1.7 billion on the platform of assets across the border, which about GBP 400 million EIS/VCT. But our operating costs and generally, in this space, people would be looking at 2% NAV, people generally aim for 1%. We're at 0.1% of NAV. And I think that gives me comfort that some of the medicine that we are trying to apply to our portfolio companies, we're also taking for ourselves. So fee income continues to grow year-on-year. And I think as the EIS/VCT book grows as our third-party asset book grows, but that fee income will continue to grow. And my objective is to grow that at a far higher rate than we are growing expenses. And so we're actually planning on an operating like-for-like basis to a flat expenses over the year. And I think that is important because that operating costs and net of fee income, I think, is a really important measure for us just to demonstrate to shareholders in the market that we are indeed taking the medicine that we are applying to our portfolio of companies. And so I think that's a quite important part. But I'm very happy to talk in more detail as we go through the questions. And the chart on the right-hand side has shown the NAV progression and the change as we have announced today, which, again, I think is a graphical representation of the figures that we've shown today. I think it's probably worth just talking a little bit and looking at the Core. So for those that are not familiar with the way we present our results and share our data, we look at about 80% of the core of our assets under management tends to be within about 15 to 20 companies. I think that was the same when we had an asset value of GBP 400 million. It's the same at GBP 1.3 billion. So it hasn't really changed. There tends to be a relatively concentrated number of companies represent the majority of the assets. And so we try to share a little bit more information on those companies individually to give shareholders a better view of what's going on in the portfolio. That, of course, does pose us with problems because then people want to know the detail about each one, and I understand that. But this is really just to give an indication of where we are. We can talk about individual companies if you wish, and I see that there have been a couple of questions that we'll pick up when we come to them. But I think the overall message I'd like to give, and this is relatively consistent, we show every 6 months that we do evaluations, is that when you look at it and look at our -- at the Core, we've invested and seen uplift in 10 of our companies. And I think that's a good mix. It's not all coming in 1 or 2 places. It's very, very diversified, very, very consistent and smooth. So we've seen up in 10, which is very encouraging. We provide follow-ons in 5. But again, this is where we would back our existing winners, where they're performing very well. And we've seen significant down rounds, you might call in 3. We've actually seen some down rounds in a number of others, but I guess the bigger ones of those 3. We can talk about them later. But the one thing I would say is that, this is the annual picture. And as Ben mentioned earlier on, the year was really a year of 2 halves. And so if you look at Graphcore, for example, most of that was taken in the first half as a result of listed stocks at that stage because these later-stage companies tend to be compared more to the listed equivalents rather than their own absolute underlying performance. Ben can maybe talk about that individually later. But a lot of this was taken in the first half. And if you look at Graphcore, for example, that, of course, has not been reflected in what's happened post 31st of March, where we've seen additional interest in AI and NVIDIA, one of the principal competitors, share price moving quite rapidly. So this is a snapshot on the 31st of March, and it is, of course, over the whole year. So I would just ask you to take that into consideration when you're viewing these numbers. But the overall picture is that across the board, we're seeing good progress in the Core, we're seeing a number of individual companies for different reasons are seeing downs, and we continue to follow on across the board in a number of our Core companies. So maybe before we go into questions, I'll say a few words about outlook. And I'm conscious I'll say a few rounding up words at the end, so I won't dwell here. But I think the key message that we want to get across is that we have a very stable team. We have deep experience of managing through right the way through the cycle, and our model is sufficiently flexible that we can adapt it and it can respond to what we're seeing in the market. And I think that's why we're seeing a very resilient performance over what has been an exceptionally turbulent 12 months. We have thesis-driven investments, so we're very clear about where we see the winners and our deal flow ability to spot those early and invest and support them through as they grow means that we can transition through the cycle despite economic headwinds. And I think that's also very important. I guess the key words for us in outlook is cautiously optimistic. The reason we are cautious is that it's clear that markets are driven by geopolitical and macroeconomic events. That's quite clear. And although I think most people would say those are looking slightly better now than they were 6 months ago, slightly clearer, we're not through it yet, and we are still subject to upsets. And so I think we are cautious. But the reason that we're optimistic is that our companies continue to solve problems using new technologies that are in real demand by enterprises, by consumers and by technologists. And so we continue to invest in those companies, continue to do what they need to do. We continue to broaden out the model by investing and building our third-party assets and income, and I think that's something very important. But in the context of all of this, we're preserving our capital. We're continuing to go into the market. We're continuing to support our existing companies, but we're preserving our capital to make sure we can support our best companies but also invest in new companies. [indiscernible] event is we are very active in the realizations market. We're not going to fire sale our assets to raise capital. We don't believe that's the right thing to do. We don't think it's in the long-term interest of shareholders. But we do think we will continue to have reasonably modest exits as we have with Earlybird 6, and I saw we had a question about that, so I'll deal with it now. We've got a very long position in there. We are 50% of Earlybird 6, and we think it's a great fund. We think there's a long way to go. But when we can see a realization that's in the kind of teens as opposed to the secondary market, that might be 50% discount. So high teens discount to NAV, we think it makes sense for us to drip-feed some of that into the market and to generate some cash. And we've done the first tranche of that. We might do another one. But that's part of our ongoing strategy to focus on realizations, get cash coming through but only if it's in a relatively modest discount to what we're carrying it at NAV because we do believe that we will be able to exit over time all of our portfolio at or above NAV. And so therefore, selling it below that is something that we do with some reluctance. So those are the results. And I think, Jake, shall I just go straight into the questions. We've got them presubmitted. I'm very happy to do that if that's, if this is the time to do that.

Martin and Ben, absolutely. And if I may just jump back in there and I'll bring back up your cameras there for the Q&A. [Operator Instructions] But just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that were submitted already. I would like to remind you the recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed by your investor dashboard. Martin, as you did just kindly mentioned, we had receive a number of presubmitted questions ahead of today's event. And as you can see there in the Q&A, we've also received a number of questions throughout your presentation this morning. So firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. And Ben, Martin, if I could just hand back to you to respond to those where it's appropriate, and then I'll pick up from you at the end.

Certainly. Thank you, Jake. So look, thank you, also for your questions. It's been really helpful, and we really do appreciate your interest and also your questions. I would ask you to keep them shortish because obviously we have to read them and get to the crux of it because we really do want to answer the questions put in. So the first couple of questions have really been, and I won't read out the presubmitted ones but really about stock repurchase and where we are to NAV in discount share price. And the first question is, why wouldn't we do stock repurchase? And the second one, there was another question about surely management should find this attractive. So the first thing is that we absolutely do believe that, that there is a disconnect between the share price and the value inherent in our business. And if we had a whole lot of available capital, we absolutely would go back into the market and buy our stock. I think that would be a very natural thing for us to do. But as I said before, we plan out our own cash requirements 12 to 18 months in advance. We've done that. And so we need to preserve our capital to make sure we can meet our commitments over the next 12 to 18 months. If we had a single big realization and we had surplus cash, I think that is something definitely that we as management and I suspect the Board would be looking at very closely. As far as us individually, Ben can speak for himself, but I do know that both he and I have purchased recently, and we are quite heavily vested in the stock of this company. We own quite a bit through our options and our own holdings, but we have both invested recently, and so I think for the question of those that ask why wouldn't we be buying, I think the answer to that question is as we have done recently, and we do. And we are very invested in growing the value of the company. The next question is around valuations and runway in the Core companies and multiple forward expectations for profits. We don't have forward expectations for profits. Maybe Ben wants to talk a little bit about the runway in the portfolio companies and how we manage that. We keep on top of that.

Yes, absolutely. So we did put some stats into the deck where we say for the Core 80% or more than 18 months of cash runway. This is the first area that we reflect on as we look at the portfolio but also as we come into the valuation process as well. The methodology for valuations starts with have they got enough liquidity and cash runway and all of our portfolio reviews do the same. Each of these companies raise capital for a 12- to 18-month period to prove out the next stage of their journey. And so it's not abnormal to us, that we will always be managing that liquidity in a proactive way. Since last September, we've been positively impressed by the portfolio, how they've effectively managed their own cash burns and their model of growth relative to costs. And we've really shifted that into this new paradigm where capital isn't cheap anymore, and therefore, the companies are being much more cost focus and to some extent, as we've seen with the 40% growth in the year being below the targeted growth, that was a reflection of the shift away from growth for all costs but really efficient growth. And the other aspect of that is pathway to profitability. Several of our companies are already showing profitability. But the majority won't and we don't necessarily want them to because we want them to grow market share, but there has to be a pathway to that, and we have to have a clear understanding of the capital that we required to make that journey. And so a lot of the focus has been in that area. And that feeds through, as I say, to valuations where the cash runway, the first point of call, and it's important. And then you look at the other aspects of valuation, such as their revenue and their growth.

Thanks, Ben. The next question is regarding your recent [ devaluation ] in the holding of Revolut, no issue with that. But is there a case for more frequent and hence, less dramatic revaluations? And I think -- look, I think it's a good point. We only, we do evaluations every 6 months. I think for us to try to do that much more than that with -- apart from give Ben a heart attack would be very complicated. We have such a thorough process. Because of our structure and our process, Ben and his team work on the valuations separate from the investment team. So they need to get all of those inputs, although they're very close to investment team, obviously. They then have to work through those with all the public market information. We then have an independent Board that reviews all of those valuations, and then we have our independent auditor that goes through the valuation process as well. And I think that rigorous checking of the valuation process is very important. But it means, by definition, you can't do it frequently. And I'm sure we may be coming to another question. Let's not go into too much detail on this. But look, one of the things I know Ben spends a lot of time on the team is trying to smooth as much as possible valuations and not having frequent dramatic movements. We want to get ahead of the bad news and behind the good news. And I think we do that, I think, pretty well, but over the last 12 months, we've seen dramatic changes in the environment. And so therefore, we've seen a few big moves. But I think the question around frequency I think anything more than 6 months is probably not really appropriate. We do it on a balance sheet date. We're sharing these numbers with you, it's from the 31st of March and the well has already moved on. So I think we have to accept that's the -- in order to get them right, we have to do it at a point in time.

I totally agree with all of that. I may be just make one point, which is we're very conscious in this year where the valuation environment moved so suddenly from Q1 '22 into Q2 '22 and onwards. We had to make those reflections early, and that's the right thing to do. The majority, therefore, of those changes were made in September. However, when you move forward-looking at the annual accounts, you're looking at March to March, and so it looks very stark again, all of a sudden, even though a lot of that news is already out there. But Martin, it's a very thorough long process. And actually, in many cases, normally, the data wouldn't change that much quarter-to-quarter, but we've had a period where the market has moved quite dramatically.

So the next question is how well are you by your inability to achieve realizations by way of IPO? How long a drag can you stand? Well, look, I mean, we're not worried about it. 80% of our businesses exit through trade sales. When the IPO market comes back, and it will come back, then we think we have a number of companies that will probably go that route. So I'm not too concerned about it. I'd love it if it was an active IPO market, not something I can control. How long of a drag can you stand? Well, as I said, we manage our cash out to 12, 18 months, and we're very comfortable that we can continue to do that. The next question is the Board and management have been buying shares? I think I've answered that, I didn't mention the Board. I do know that our Chair announced that he had bought some shares recently as well. So I think we are committed. What is long-term -- long run in terms of IRR, but I think that's, in our terms, that's return? We do still believe 20% through the cycle return per year is still achievable. But obviously, that is through the cycle. If you look and Ben showed earlier on, the return since listing shows that we have been able to deliver that. And when we get to more normalized markets, we think we will be able to continue to do that. Next question is how do you see third-party AUM increasing? How do you plan to achieve this? Well, I think I've covered that in the presentation. Certainly, our strategy and our intention. We've announced that we are looking to raise Eastern European fund. We have a number of climate assets that we think makes sense to move that into a fund, and we have a number of other funds that we're looking to announce over the financial year that will demonstrate that we are making real progress in this area. Next one is that do we hedge FX exposure. We don't -- I don't know if you want to talk about that, Ben, but I think...

I'll briefly explain FX exposure. We're fairly well balanced, so we have some natural hedges in the portfolio between companies valued in dollars, euros and pounds. So that tends to work itself out. We have periods where it's up and where it's -- and those where its down, obviously. So we don't, therefore, look to hedge it because of our natural hedge that exists. Also in reality, because we're investing across those 3 currencies as well, it's quite hard to match that up in a sensible way. When you look at the companies we invest in, the time horizon of holding is not strictly certain, so we can hold the winners for longer. We can back those companies. So hedging becomes a bit more complicated in that sense. And you're more likely to be on the wrong side of any hedging that we try to do. So we don't look to hedge that other than the natural hedge that exists within the portfolio.

Thanks, Ben. Look, we've got a lot of questions. So we'll try to keep our responses short. The next question means that it's going to be difficult to do that. It actually asked us to comment on Graphcore revenue, Ledger, Aiven and PrimaryBid as declines why we've driven the decline in each case. I think rather than that, Ben, I think because we just haven't got time, do you want to give a general comment?

Yes, just in aggregate because it does reflect across them. First comment was we reflected public market movements in valuation. That has been the majority of cases why the valuations have come down. The growth in those companies, in aggregate, as we've shown, is still increased. There are some specific circumstances in this period with Graphcore and with Aiven where we weren't seeing the traction that underpinned the previous valuations from a revenue perspective. As I said, revenue is very important. And even though there's still growth coming. If that rate of growth drops, that's a signal for us to look at moving it down. And it's really a judgment that we prefer to be very prudent with our valuations. And then as those companies grow and continue to prove out their models, we can bring them back. But we -- as we've said earlier, that's really in line with our approach to value.

Thanks, Ben. The next question is with the outlook of realization is uncertain, are you still in a position for the plc to continue making new investments? But I think I've covered that to a degree. We do think there will be realizations, but this is a very good time to invest, and we're seeing some really interesting opportunities come across our desk. So we would always take the view that if we saw something interesting, then we would look to ways to fund it. There are a number of ways to fund it through debt structures or through third-party capital. We would not be looking to raise equity at this stage at this discount. But we are very active in the market, and we don't want to miss the opportunities as they come about. And we certainly don't want to miss them as a result of waiting for realizations. The next question is around shareholder doubt about valuations. I think it's more a question about trying to value the assets, which is difficult for shareholders. We understand that. The second part of the question is about bleak outlook at the tech. I really don't buy that. I think this is a really exciting time for investing in technology. And when you look at the real benefits the technology is bringing to enterprises, I think this is a really, really interesting time to be investing in tech. And I think we'll really start to see some good returns and some really good developments in technology over the next 18 months to 2 years. Next question around. Do we suffer from the inability of analysts to get the head around the proposition of giving those 70 portfolio companies? Look, we understand that. We spend time with the analysts. We are a portfolio play. We do understand the pressures that gives us, but we really haven't got any choice but to continue with.

Maybe I'll just touch on one thing there because I think that's a fair perception. But the reality is the analysts actually once they get their head around it, if you look at it in aggregate, when you look at the baseline, the valuations and the return profile over time is actually quite easy to model us. It's a few lines in the spreadsheet in that sense. And then as you say, it's getting to understand the key drivers, which are the Core portfolio. And so understanding those companies. So when we speak to our analysts, whether that be housed with Numis, Goodbody, also Peel Hunt, Berenberg, Jefferies that cover us, it's something that they move past quite quickly, and they can see that looking at it in aggregate is the right way.

Thanks. I've got a couple of questions on individual companies. But again, I think in the interest of time, I don't think we can really go -- we can really do that. The one thing I would say on the Graphcore question specifically was -- there's a question about the Microsoft deal or some news flow. We don't react to news flow, and by the time it gets into the papers, it can be quite old news. And as it happens, that was quite a hot news. So we react to what's happening in the companies, not what is happening in the press. A question about interesting subsectors, and is there a change in mix? I think so a little bit. I mentioned earlier on, consumer-driven ones maybe slightly under a little bit of pressure right now. But certainly, anything related to climate, deeptech, health, certainly, those areas, we're seeing a lot of interest. We had a lot of talk about AI. If we had another hour, we could talk about that. We're already heavily invested most of our companies use AI. We have a number of companies like causaLens and [indiscernible] that did use AI very deeply, obviously, Graphcore depends on the AI adoption through its chip. So we think that we're in a good position to benefit from that particular sector and the noise around that. So I think that's where we're seeing probably the most interests. Question about Earlybird, and I noticed that Miguel had a previous question about Earlybird 6 and would we sell additional slices of that we might do. There's a lot of interest, if we can narrow the discount to NAV, then we've got a very big position there. And the other question is the cash receivable now deferred. It's -- generally, it is receivable immediately in this particular tranche, it is I say now, I think, this month. So the question to that is now. And then we've got to really good question about AI and our valuation is being driven higher by the AI. Not in our Core portfolios yet. We are seeing a couple of companies that got AI in the name and evaluations are going up. Are we going to rebrand as Molten AI and therefore, everyone buy our shares? We're going to resist that, although I have to say it's tempting. We'll see these things come and go. I think the first new networks paper was published in 1943. Our companies have been using AI for some time, and we invest, and maybe this is also part of my closing remarks, we invest in innovators who use the best technology and capabilities to be able to solve problems quicker, better, faster, cheaper. And that's what AI does and that's what we're seeing in generative AI, and we see it as a huge opportunity, both for our portfolio companies to solve problems quicker. And most of our innovating founders are already on that journey, and they're getting closer on that and quicker on that journey with the adoption we've seen. So I don't see us running around paying huge high prices for anything that's got AI in the name, and that's not the way we invest. What we want to see is we want to see that AI advances translated into revenue and into economic value, and that's where we will invest. And I can -- I'm not going to talk about where it were coming the tech stack. We've got views. We are beginning to see it at the moment of the computing infrastructure layer and the lighter Graphcore should benefit. And so I think the last question is around are we likely to see any recovery in the early stage until we place it back in the bottle. Look, we agree with that to a degree. But at the end of the day, we look at the companies and the potential of those companies to generate revenue to grow very rapidly. Have they got the right people? Have they got the right technology? Are they in the right markets? Do we believe they can really scale? And actually, those questions haven't changed. And so actually, I think investing in slightly earlier stage companies, I think they will recover according to what they deliver as opposed to the economic environment. Second, third tier companies will suffer more. I think we understand that. But obviously, we believe we're in the top tier companies where they will continue to do well. Now I'm saying -- that question is, I think, a very general one, which I think actually wraps up. I'm supposed to hand back to Jake. Bearing my time Jake, should I just crack on with a few final words.

Yes, absolutely. Please be Martin.

So as I've said before, the need for technology and the application of technology highlighted by a lot of the hype we had seen recently in generative AI, it has never been greater. So the outlook for tech in Europe, is very, very good and particularly across Europe, we're seeing real innovation and technology in these companies growing and generating real value by solving enterprise and other critical problems. And that's where we invest. And if we continue to invest in those companies, we retain our investment discipline, preserve our plc capital and build third-party capital, then we believe that we will be in a very strong position to be able to ride out through the stage of the cycle but also critically take advantage of the next stage of the cycle, which will start to happen quicker than, I believe, than the main market sees it. So for us, we will continue to be in the market. We preserve our capital. We look after our portfolio of companies will help them to grow, and we'll continue to invest in the next generation of European companies that are inventing in the future. And so cautiously optimistic is where I think I would probably finish at these results. And just with probably a final comment, which is, I'd like to thank all our retail investors. They're a very important part of our investment community. It is what we want to do is to bring the returns of this sector to a much broader group of investors. And -- but communicating with retail community is much more difficult. We've been doing this now a little bit more frequently in the last few years. We're happy to do more and any feedback, we always very, very welcome to hear. So with that, from Ben and I thank you very much for your time and for your questions, and I will hand back to Jake.

Thank you, everyone.

Martin, that's great. And Ben as well, thank you very much indeed for being so generous of your time in addressing all of those questions that came in from investors. And now I will redirect those on the call for their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourselves and the company. So could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Molten Ventures Plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all.