Portfolio Update

RNS Number : 3980H

Sure Ventures PLC

31 July 2019

 

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

Portfolio Update

31 July 2019

Sure Ventures plc, 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) in Fintech is pleased to provide an update on its investment portfolio.

SURE VALLEY VENTURES

Sure Ventures made a €4.5 million commitment to Sure Valley Ventures Fund ('Sure Valley') representing an interest in Sure Valley Ventures of approximately 22.17% (assuming no other funding commitments are made).  This commitment was made at a price of €1.00 per share; the last recorded Sure Valley Ventures dealing NAV as at the 30th of June 2019 was €0.98.764.

Sure Valley Ventures has several investments across the AR, VR, IoT and AI in Fintech sectors:

            ·     VR Education Holdings Plc - http://immersivevreducation.com/

VRE is a ground-breaking developer of Virtual Reality ('VR') software and immersive experiences with a specific focus on education and enterprise learning and development. VRE's core platform is the Engage VR platform that enables educators to develop VR education experiences and enterprises to develop corporate learning and development VR simulations for workplace training.

The company has released five major products to date:

• Apollo 11 VR: immersivevreducation.com/apollo-11-vr

• Titanic VR: immersivevreducation.com/titanic-vr

• Berlin Blitz: immersivevreducation.com/1943-berlin-blitz

• Engage VR: immersivevreducation.com/engage-platform

• Raid on the Ruhr: https://immersivevreducation.com/raid-on-the-ruhr/ 

·     WarDucks - www.warducks.com

Founded by former Facebook employee, Nikki Lannen, WarDucks' mission is to build incredible, high quality, fun augmented and virtual reality games. The company has six bestselling titles under its belt, the latest two of which were Top Ten on PlayStation VR. To enable the company take this product to the market it completed a series A round of €3.284 million in Q1, with new investors EQT investing €2.58 million, Suir Valley following on to maintain it percentage with €453,858.32 and existing investors making up the remaining investment. The transaction completed on the 29^th of March 2019. This represented a 4x uplift in our initial investment.

·     Wia - www.wia.io

WIA is a ground-breaking Internet of Things (IoT) cloud platform https://www.wia.io/product, enabling developers to turn any type of sensor device into a secure, smart and useful application in a matter of minutes. WIA is the easiest and fastest way to link sensors and devices to develop IoT applications. WIA's end-to-end platform provides full device and application management, security, data capture and storage, analysis, control, as well as the seamless integration of enterprise systems. WIA also just lunched its own hardware product called the "Dot One"  https://www.wia.io/dot-one as an entry level device for first time makers.

·     ProVision - www.provisioncameramatics.com

ProVision is the leader in CameraMatics solutions for commercial fleets, ProVision delivers products that allow fleet managers to reduce fleet risk, increase driver safety and comply with growing governance and compliance regulations. ProVision has merged 4 key technologies: video input systems (cameras and scanners), smart processing systems, communications systems and unique algorithmic IP to deliver intelligent driver and fleet safety systems. To support further growth and USA market entry the company has started meeting investors to lead its series A round and we expect the company to complete that round before the end of Q4 2019.

·     NDRC Arc Labs - http://www.arclabs.ie/

The NDRC@ArcLabs investment was structured as a subscription as a limited Partner to the Accelerator. The purpose of the Accelerator is source and develop 30 start-ups over two years that Suir Valley has the right to invest in. The Accelerator is running three calls for 10 start-ups over 2 years in areas that are related to the fund's investment strategy of AR/VR, IoT and AI. As a result of the Accelerator's programme significantly overlapping with the Fund's investment areas we see this Accelerator being a source of proprietary deal flow.

·     Artomatix - https://artomatix.com/

Artomatix has patent pending AI software technology that cuts the cost of content creation for animated movies, video games and AR/VR applications by over 85% through AI automation. Given that the typical cost of a CGI movie, such as Avatar, is $300 million, a AAA video game such as Destiny is $330 million and a typical animated movie is $175 million and can take 4-6 years to develop, Artomatix has the potential to revolutionize these industries. Suir Valley invested €750 thousand in preference shares at a pre-money of €11 million and also purchased €150 thousand ordinary shares at pre-money of approximately €3.5 million. These ordinary shares have been converted to preference shares to bring our total shareholding in the company to just over 10% fully diluted. The company was also awarded a 3.2m euro grant from the Irish governments disruptive Technology Fund and the Fast Track to innovation fund (EU) in December which is being put to good use. Gareth - do you want to include the DTIF funding here?

·     Nova Leah - https://novaleah.com/

       Nova Leah is the leader in cyber security for connected medical devices and is an IoT investment by Sure Valley Ventures. Nova Leah sells directly to the top medical device manufactures typically in Boston, MA and the west coast of the USA. The company's first product Select Evidence helps medical device manufacturers identify and address cyber-security issues throughout the manufacturing and release process of their connected medical devices. Sure Valley Ventures invested €750,000 in the company for 10.62% of the business fully diluted. Subsequent to our investment which closed on the 5^th of October 2018 the company was successful in the Irish government Disruptive Technology Fund (DTIF) programme for 1.5m euros.

·     Admix Ltd - https://admix.in/

      Admix has developed what is called a Supply-Side Platform (SSP) which enables developers to monetize their content by creating, managing and sell advertising inventory. Being an SSP, Admix is a broker that sells developers (think WarDucks) inventory programmatically at scale. Being programmatic automatizes the buying/selling process. Admix enables, for the first time, VR/AR inventory to become immediately available to thousands of advertisers connected to the existing ecosystem, which provides VR/AR developers with instant revenue. Sure Valley Ventures invested $500 thousand at a pre-money of $5,000,000 for a shareholding of 7% fully diluted in the business, with a right in the investment docs to get to 10% at the next round should Sure Valley Ventures choose to. 

·     VividQ Ltd - https://www.vivid-q.com/

    VividQ is a deep tech software company with world-leading expertise in 3D holography: the next generation display technology. Holography has long been considered the ultimate display technology. The science fiction ideal of engineering and manipulating light to produce 3D projections appealed to the imagination of millions through franchises such as Star Wars or Star Trek. Holography overcomes these issues, and paves the way for immersive 3D without the need glasses at all. VividQ disrupts existing ways of creating 3D images, such stereo or autostereo-display, to power the next generation of holographic VR headsets, AR smart glasses, and automotive head-up displays. Sure Valley Ventures invested £500K in preference shares at a pre-money valuation of £6.5m for a total stake of 5.23% fully diluted.

·     Ambisense - https://ambisense.net/

      Ambisense's Ambilytics™ platform optimises the delivery of environmental risk assessment on some of the world's largest infrastructure projects across industrial, Oil & Gas and Waste Management verticals, partnering with global multinationals such as CEMEX, SGS & Arcadis. Ambilytics™ encompasses both IoT and AI solutions, combining information from remotely deployed field devices with contextual data sources such as weather, satellite, geophysical and operational data to build machine learning models.

       Ambisense has developed a toolkit to enable customers to build fully customisable, web-enabled instruments to acquire and analyse the data required quickly and cost-effectively.  Each element can be tailored to different needs whether a client wants to measure gas, air or water quality or anything in between.

DIRECT INVESTMENTS

Investments made directly by Sure Ventures plc:

Immotion PLC ('Immotion'), is a UK based company that creates its own high-quality VR content and enhances the immersive experience by coupling this content with motion simulation. Sure Ventures made a £500,000 investment in February 2018. As previously announced, Immotion listed on the Alternative Investment Market in July 2018, at a price that represented a notable uplift in the value of Sure Venture's original investment. We have seen Immotion make significant progress with units being deployed into Sea Life centres, museums, leisure arena's, zoo's and theme parks/ entertainment centres across the globe. They have partnered with brands such as Lego discovery centres, Lego Land, Merlin Entertainment, The O2, Intu properties, Madame Tussauds and Landsec.

VividQ - In addition to the Sure Valley Ventures £500,000 stake into VividQ, Sure Ventures has also made a direct investment into the company of £500k at the recommendation of the AIFM. The board identified the opportunity as a suitable and complementary investment for Sure Ventures' portfolio and agreed that this was an exciting deep technology company that could have developed a solution that changes the way that people view content in 3D. Holography could be the next generation of display technology and the types of companies that are early stage adopters of VividQ's software offers shareholders an exciting opportunity.

Sure Ventures Director, Gareth Burchell said, "We are pleased that the AIFM has added Ambisence Ltd to the portfolio and we are happy with the construction that the AIFM are taking here. This is an exciting time for us as a number of our portfolio companies are approaching their series A funding round. The Immotion price has lifted since the last reporting period which has contributed heavily to the NAV improving from 83.03p to 90.3p. We look forward to keeping shareholders informed of developments." 

ENDS

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

Gareth Burchell	Sure Ventures plc	[phone]
Melissa Hancock / Gaby Jenner	St Brides Partners (Financial PR)	[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. The Company aims to provide investors with a diversified exposure to three rapidly-growing markets: augmented reality/virtual reality, fintech and Internet of Things.  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/

 

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