Investment and exits update

RNS Number : 3836S

Draper Esprit PLC

11 March 2019

 

 11 March 2019

Draper Esprit plc

("Draper Esprit" or the "Company")

Investment and exits update

Draper Esprit (AIM: GROW, Euronext Growth: GRW), a leading venture capital firm investing in and developing high growth digital technology businesses, today announces an update on recent investments and developments in its portfolio ahead of hosting its portfolio CEO Day for analysts and institutional, EIS, and VCT investors on 12 March 2019. No new material financial information will be disclosed during the event.

The Company has continued to invest in new and existing high growth portfolio companies. Recent investments include a £7 million funding round in Hadean led by Draper Esprit, a £4.3million (€5 million) investment in N26, a £3 million investment in Onefootball and a further investment as part of Trustpilot's $55 million Series E funding round.

Other developments within the Company's core portfolio include the acquisition of Graze by Unilever plc and a strategic investment in Pod Point from Legal & General.

The board is confident that the Company is on track to meet its NAV growth expectations for the full year ending 31 March 2019.

Hadean

Draper Esprit led a £7 million funding round in Hadean, the London headquartered deep tech company. Hadean has created the first cloud-first operating system (HadeanOS), enabling programmers to scale their code by treating entire cloud data-centres as a single gigantic computer.

Their distributed simulation engine, Aether Engine, is currently being used by the Francis Crick Institute to simulate large and complex models for novel research in diseases such as cancer. CCP Games, influential creator of the MMPORPG EVE Online, has also announced a partnership with Hadean to explore opportunities around largescale multiplayer games.

Other investors in the round include Aster and specialist gaming investor London Venture Partners. Existing investors Luminous Ventures and Entrepreneur First also participated.

N26

Draper Esprit has invested £4.3 million  (€5 million) in N26 as part of the strategic partnership with Earlybird Digital West. N26 provides a global mobile bank account. Since launching its first product in January 2015, N26 has welcomed more than 2.3 million customers in 24 European markets. Customers hold more than €1 billion in N26 accounts.

N26 raised $300 million as part of a series D funding round in January, led by Insight Venture Partners with participation from Tencent, Allianz X, Valar Ventures, Horizons Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, Redalphine Ventures and Greyhound Capital.

Earlybird Partnership

In addition to N26, the Company invested £3 million via the Earlybird Digital West partnership into Onefootball, a leading media platform for global football fans. The Company also invested £1.2 million in aggregate into Kreatize and Mydatamodels.

Trustpilot

Trustpilot, the leading independent platform for companies to build trust with consumers, has raised $55 million in its Series E funding round, including participation by Draper Esprit (as announced on 5 March 2019).

The Company first invested in Trustpilot in 2013, with follow-on investments in 2015 and 2017. The investment round is supportive of the NAV uplift reported at 30 September 2018 (including the benefit of the acquisition of the DFJ Europe X fund in November 2018 which increased the Company's stake in Trustpilot).

Pod Point

Pod Point, one of the UK's largest electric vehicle charging point operators, and a constituent of the Company's Core Portfolio, received new investment from Legal & General in March 2019, taking a 13% stake in Pod Point.

Seed Funds

The fund of fund strategy continues to increase Draper Esprit's opportunity to source the best deals from across Europe. Further commitments have been made to Europe's top seed funds including Hardware Club (Paris, France), Byfounders (Copenhagen, Denmark), and Indico Capital (Lisbon, Portugal).

Exits

The Company recently sold its holding in Graze, the UK's leading healthy snacking brand, as part of its acquisition by Unilever plc in February. Draper Esprit invested a total of £3.7 million in Graze, having first invested before Draper Esprit's IPO in 2016. The exit generated an IRR of 19%.  Draper Esprit also exited its small stake in Crowdpress Ltd, which was acquired via the Seedcamp funds acquisition in 2017.

A total of £13 million has been received from realisations, including escrow balances from previous periods, since the Company's interim results in November 2018.

Simon Cook, CEO at Draper Esprit, commented:

"We've had another busy period, as we continue to deliver on our mission - namely to provide support and deep, long-term capital to the most exciting tech companies in Europe, that we believe have the potential to become global leaders; thus providing access to the investment returns from these high-growth, private tech companies to public investors."

Enquiries

Draper Esprit plc Simon Cook (Chief Executive Officer) Ben Wilkinson (Chief Financial Officer)	[phone]
Numis Securities Nominated Adviser & Joint Broker Alex Ham Richard Thomas Jamie Loughborough	[phone]
Goodbody Stockbrokers Euronext Growth Adviser & Joint Broker Don Harrington Charlotte Craigie Richard Tunney	[phone]
MHP Communications (PR) Reg Hoare Pete Lambie Flo Mayo	[phone]  [e-mail]

 

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