Portfolio Update Q2 2022

RNS Number : 6293Z

Sure Ventures PLC

15 September 2022

 

Sure Ventures plc ('Sure  Ventures' or 'the Company')

Portfolio Update Q2 2022, NAV Calculation and Director commentary

Sure Ventures is a London listed venture capital fund which invests in early stage software companies in the rapidly growing technology areas of Augmented Reality ('AR'), Virtual Reality ('VR'), Internet of Things ('IoT') and Artificial Intelligence (AI). We are pleased to provide an update on the Company's investment portfolio.

SURE VALLEY VENTURES FUND

Sure Ventures made a €7million commitment to Sure Valley Ventures Fund ('Sure Valley') representing an interest in Sure Valley of approximately 25.9%. This commitment was made at a price of €1.00 per share. The current NAV of the Sure Valley Ventures ICAV is €1.47 which is a 2.836%% decrease from its NAV as at Q1 2022.

Sure Valley has several investments across the AI, AR, VR and IoT sectors and the major contributing factors and commentary on underlying companies that has driven this NAV calculation are as follows:

Admix/Landvault

Admix merged with Landvault, a builder in metaverse worlds like The Sandbox and Decentraland as it pivots to Web 3. The combined company will be known as Landvault. By merging with Laundvault, Admix aims to become a go-to service provider for major intellectual property holders and brands enabling big companies across all industries to enter the metaverse and be monetised with Admix's in-game advertising technology.

Admix completed a re-organisation of the team and also have integrated the LandVault

Management Team. This strategic move has led to a significantly improved margins and they have been successful in winning clients with major world wide brands.

GetVisibility

In March 2022 Getvisibility closed a Series A round of €10,000,000 led by AIC which included

Fortino Capital and as well as follow-on investment from Sure Valley Ventures, Pires Investments

and Manifold Investments Limited among others.

Getvisibility has also expanded its pipeline by $6M and has onboarded 31 new channel partners across 7 countries. Getvisibility recently expanded its product offering by adding Google's platform capabilities and a new Data Breach Risk report which will help businesses measure and benchmark their security and data governance capabilities.

Volograms

The mobile AR market is forecast to grow from the one billion compatible devices and over $8 billion in revenue in 2019 to 2.5 billion compatible devices and $60 billion in revenue by 2024. The Volograms mobile product will enable mobile phone users to take AR pictures and videos, then view, edit and share them with others. This can be done directly or through social media platforms. Thus, the product is an end user or consumer product but the planned route to market will be through mobile OEMs.

We believe that Volograms is opening a new market category for AR photos and video. This

category should have much greater appeal for content creators and social media users than the

existing static 3D content solutions on offer

Listed holdings

Equity markets have been volatile, and both Engage XR (EXR.L) and Immotion PLC (IMMO.L) traded lower on a quarter-on-quarter basis. The AIFM are happy with both positions and are long term investors. Both listed entities are producing strong revenue growth and market adoption.

Immotion PLC:   the company's LBE business is currently enjoying very strong trading in the key summer period, with unaudited July 2022 revenue of £1.3m being the division's best ever month. This takes unaudited LBE revenue for the seven months to 31 July 2022 to £5.7m, a 78% increase from £3.2m in the equivalent period in 2021. 

completed two small-scale installations at Chester Zoo and Legoland Discovery Center Philadelphia and so the Group now has 488 seats across 54 locations. The Group has visibility on a pipeline of new sites and additional seats at certain existing sites. Should all these developments materialise, the Directors expect that the Group will comfortably pass the 500 seat mark by the end of H2 2022.

ENGAGE XR reported their Interim results for the period to June 2022 and were inline with market expectations. Total revenue for the Group up c.41% to €1.76m (H1 2021: €1.25m) with Engage revenue up 62%. The gross margin sits at a very healthy 81% and the company had 4.9m Euros of cash.

The number of commercial customers has increased to over 180 since ENGAGE's launch in May 2019 with over 50 customers added in 2022. US Partner VictoryXR has launched 10 'Metaversities' funded by Meta and built on the ENGAGE platform and now has 24/5 customer support with teams in the US, Australia, and Europe available to support customers.

SURE VALLEY VENTURES ENTERPRISE CAPITAL FUND

During the first quarter of 2022 Sure Ventures PLC also made a commitment of £5m to the Sure Valley Ventures Capital Fund. The fund has launched, and the first investment was made in a company called RETìníZE on the 16^th of March 2022.

Retinize are developing an innovative software product called Animotive that is harnessing the latest VR technologies to transform the 3D animation production process. The proceeds of the seed round will drive the next two-year step in its growth and the global rollout of Animotive.

The seed round, led by the SVV Software Fund's £1 million investment, marks the first investment from this fund which recently announced its first close of £85 million, which included a cornerstone £50 million investment from the British Business Bank, an investment arm of the UK Government.

Sure Ventures PLC NAV

The Sure ventures PLC NAV at the end of June 2022 sits at 125.75p. This represents a 2.443% decrease across the period, down from 128.9p per share at the end of Q1. This decrease represents costs and changes to the value of its listed holdings in Engage XR and Immotion PLC.

Forward looking statement & Director comment

When calculating the NAV for both Sure Valley Ventures and Sure Ventures PLC we do not re-rate an unlisted investee company valuation unless there is a funding round priced by another investor. The nature and stage of the software companies that we invest requires patience and we are now starting to see these businesses mature at a strong pace. The pipeline of deals for Sure Valley ventures Enterprise Capital fund remains robust.

Gareth Burchell comment 

"Sure Valley Ventures and its portfolio of deep technology companies continue to perform well in what are difficult economic circumstances. There are a number of our companies that are looking to their next stage growth, scaling up the commercialisation of their product offering and we are confident of continued growth in Q3 2022 "

For further information, please visit www.sureventuresplc.com or contact:

Gareth Burchell

Sure Ventures plc

[phone]

Notes to Editors

Sure Ventures plc listed on the London Stock Exchange in January 2018 giving retail investors access to an asset class that is usually dominated by private venture capital funds. Sure Ventures is focusing on companies in the UK, Republic of Ireland and other European countries, making seed and series A investments in companies with first rate management teams, products which benefit from market validation with target revenue run rates of at least £400,000 over the next 12 months. Website: https://www.sureventuresplc.com/

 

END

 

 

PFUUVVRRUKUKAAR