EMV Capital (LSE:EMVC) — Final Results for the year to 31 December 2025

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the EMV CAPITAL PLC final results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and they can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Iliad Iliad. Good morning to you. Good morning. Okay. Well, welcome to the investor presentation for the annual results EMV CAPITAL for the year ended 12/31/2025. I'm joined today by my colleague, Ed Hooper, executive director and general counsel of EMV CAPITAL PLC, as well as Anesh Patel, who joined us as CFO a few months ago and who will take you through some of the numbers. In terms of the presentation, we'll once we have gone through that, we'll have q and a as usual. So please send your questions, and looking forward to answering those at the end.

1:07 So in terms of a in terms of a brief background on EMV CAPITAL for those of you who new to our story, we have a vision to be the leading or a leading deep tech and life sciences VC in The UK and Europe. We've grown significantly from roughly 12,000,000 AUM in 2020 to a 100,000,000 plus in AUM in 70 plus companies today. What we do is we basically work with to identify, invest in, and grow high growth companies, primarily in The UK with some international ones. And we are targeting further growth, and reaching a 100,000,000 for us is not a destination. It's a step we are working towards the next milestone of roughly 200,000,000. We are a differentiated investment group. Clearly, we're enlisted. We also have an FCA authorized subsidiary that does fundraising, corporate finance, and fund management practices. And as you hear about our model, we have found ways of maximizing the use of the PLC infrastructure to develop something quite interesting in the venture capital space in The UK.

2:15 In terms of our team, I'm the CEO and a substantial shareholder of EMV CAPITAL. I've got a background in economics, business strategy, IP, and other areas. Our chair, Charles Spicer, has a background in PLC, life sciences. Jonathan Robinson, senior independent director, again, background in PLC, material science, as well as growing digital companies. Ed has a background from from the city, having worked for many years in corporate, m and a, IPO, and many other aspects. And Anesh Patel, m and a investment background, former POC, CFO, and a qualified accountant. Now before I get into the rest of the presentation, I wanna give you the highlights for the year. We've had a good year in the context of a pretty challenging macroeconomic and political environment.

3:06 Our AUM has grown 14% year on year to 112,000,000. Group revenues have increased 17%. What we call the core revenue, which is the core operations of EMV CAPITAL has grown to 3,200,000, 30% growth on last year, and we'll explain later why EMVC is higher than the core is higher than the group. But also quite importantly, if you recall, one of the core elements of our strategy is what we call venture built, where we work with some companies, take deep stakes, and develop them. We're now seeing some pretty significant uplifts from those businesses. We're looking at 12% uplift to POC investment in those companies. Last year, we've raised roughly 12,000,000 of third party capital across 14 portfolio companies, an increase from 24.

3:51 We have fully integrated market capital. This is the Cambridge focused VC fund. We of which we became a fund manager just over two two years ago. We have launched a co investment program also with Market, and we've added one company, AMR Bio, which acquired the assets from Destiny Pharma to our venture build portfolio. So it's been a busy year, a overall good year, of course, with its challenges, and we're now looking to what comes next. As a refresher on on on ourselves and our portfolio, we have roughly two areas. There's deep tech and life sciences, and this consolidated portfolio is across all our holdings, direct, advised, and market capital. And what you'll see here just in terms of the breadth of it is that while we are focused on deep tech and life sciences areas that are characterized by deep IP, we are cover we are covering the future of compute, semiconductors, AI autonomous robotics, space tech on life sciences, also a few areas. And many of these areas are where either currently there is a lot of growth.

4:54 You all know about what's happening in in in space tech as well as around data centers and AI, but also where major global and society needs are. So we have a high conviction that the focus areas where we are within deep tech and life sciences are ones that will grow for many years to come. In terms of our overall portfolio and the split, you can see that in this slide. In terms of holding types, you know, this market capital with roughly 25,000,000 directly owned. So this is directly owned by PLC shareholders, yourselves, £38,000,000. Third party managed. This is money that we've syndicated on a deal by deal basis, roughly 46,000,000, and our EIS funds starting to show growth. So the next few slides, I'll take you through our operating model, how how we make it work. So the first thing to flag is that as some of you know, a challenge that you that that some PLC VCs, listed VCs have had is that in the absence of operational income, they're dependent on always being able to raise money in order to sustain their their growing portfolio.

6:04 When our management team took over back in 2020, we changed that, and we said, look. The model is that we want to cover operational income mostly from operation operational costs from operational income so that the capital returns are the cherry on top. And we have largely done that. We're not all the way there, but we are almost there. So in terms of what are the operational income sources, it's corporate finance and fundraising fees we charge to the companies we work with, value creation services fees, especially for the venture built portfolio where we support the growth of those companies. In increasing proportion is recurring fund management fees. So this fee provides the ongoing operational income, which at the moment are close to covering our cash costs, and exits and carried interest that PLC gets from a third party managed managed money is the cherry on top that that should provide the the return. So that is the core of our model.

6:59 Within that, we have several tools that we have developed since 2020. You know, ultimately, we want to grow the the value of our portfolio companies, add new portfolio companies, get them to the next stage, defend our stake, sell them, and make money out of that. But it's not as as you can imagine, there's some complexity in that. So the way we see it is, look, this is based on proactive management of the companies, engaging with the boards and the co investors. For the companies that are part of our venture build program, selective investment, building 20% plus direct stakes as well as bringing other investors alongside us, providing value creation services to support the growth of the companies that need that. We do that through our in house team as well as an adviser's team that we have and a panel of preferred suppliers.

7:51 In this space, we find that companies often find themselves in difficult situation where they need some high end corporate finance support, but they can't afford that. We have an in house corporate finance team that supports our portfolio companies in structuring, restructuring, syndicating external investment and that's worked quite well into I flagged earlier what we have done last year for these businesses. Again, this is not a separate stand alone brokerage. It is to support and service the companies. The fund management side that I've spoken about is providing increasing AUM, but also increasing carried interest potential for the business. And, of course, ultimately, roads to exit where we're not passive. We work actively with the companies to identify such routes. These six areas of activities combined in this business enable us to do what we do.

8:40 A a few a few more words about AUM as a source of capital because that's increase that's one of our core focus areas going forward. It is not just for number's sake. It is not a vanity number. Growing AUM means that we are scaling our investment capacity, our capacity to deploy capital into our portfolio and to add new companies. It provides additional recurring management fees, helping to pay for the infrastructure, and the scope for carried interest if our investment strategy is successful. What is what composes the AIR growth is, of course, EMV CAPITAL's balance sheet investments. What we've already been doing, roughly £40,000,000 of third party managed investments with our growing investor syndicate, and that's continuing to grow. But on the fund side, in addition to market capital and the EAS fund, there is new fund initiatives that we have underway, which I won't list here, but there's a number of things that we're working on in the background, which we expect will will pay off in a in in years to come.

9:37 Now let's put some numbers to it. We started off PLC started off in the first half of two thousand and twenty with roughly £12,000,000 under management, and this was entirely direct stakes. In the second half of twenty twenty, PLC acquired EMV CAPITAL. Now you know our group group's name now is EMV CAPITAL, which in that scientific, and that added the advised element of 40,000,000 plus for the direct stakes. That continued to grow until 2024 when we added market capital as a mandate. And as I flagged, we have other fund mandates that are that that we're looking to add. What's the result of that is consistent year on year growth for the last five years of 50% CAGR over that period. You know? In some years, directs have been up or down. In some years, advice has been up or down. But as a whole, we have shown consistent growth on our AUM, which makes us confident for the way forward with all the various investment activities that we have on the way.

10:40 And now I'll hand over to Anish to take you through some of the numbers. Thanks, Ilian. And I'll start out by saying that 2025, it was a year of good significant operational and financial progress for EMV. Moving to the portfolio, our directly owned equity investments grew 9% to £14,600,000. We think that's a good robust outcome given the macroeconomic headwinds during 2025 and which continue to persist today. And we think this reflects our disciplined portfolio stewardship and the active engagement with our co investors. Turning to group revenue. We reported £2,900,000 in 2025. That's a 17% growth on the prior year, and that was mostly due to increased fundraising activity from the portfolio, which resulted in higher corporate finance fees, as as as Aileen has mentioned, the full operational integration of Modern Capital, which has expanded the recurring fund management fee base, and the these both offset the decline in ProAxis revenues, which still feed into the top line number. So ProAxis fell from naught 0.4 to naught £100,000.

11:56 We also we also report, as Ilian as Ilian has mentioned, EMVC core revenue, which is our preferred measure. It's non IFRS, and it represents the core operations on a standalone VC investment management business basis. EMVC core revenues grew even more strongly at 31 at £3,200,000. And the reason that's higher than reported revenues is because of the adjustments. Essentially, what we do, we strip out the consolidation impact of Proaxis and Glycotest. So we remove Proaxis' revenues from the top line, then we add back the fundraising and other fees that we charge to Proaxis and Glycotest in the same way that we charge other portfolio companies, hence the hence the difference. And we think this provides a a cleaner and more meaningful picture of the underlying investment management business.

12:52 In terms of the breakdown of 3,200,000, that's mostly into three revenue streams. Corporate finance fees is the largest component, and we generated £1,200,000 of corporate finance fees, which is 70% higher than the prior year. Fund management fees were £1,000,000 £1,000,000 versus 700,000 in the prior year. And then value creation services, which is the advisory and support activities and services which we provide to our portfolio. That was broadly flat at £1,000,000 in 2025. And as we've mentioned, the revenue now covers a substantial significant proportion of core operating costs, and we're moving towards financial self sufficiency.

13:39 Probably worth also just noting that in some cases, these two portfolio companies, sometimes settle in equity rather than cash, often often at a discount to the issue price, and this has benefits for both us and the portfolio. It supports the portfolio company's cash position. It provides the group EMV with increased equity exposure and upside potential at no additional cash cost. Moving towards the profitability metrics, so the reported group losses narrowed 83% to £3,700,000 in 2024 to just £600,000 in 2025. And that's a combination of the revenue growth, which we've spoken about, and active cost discipline.

14:25 Now we've made selective investments in in the team and the infrastructure without allowing the cost base to to run ahead of the income. On an EMVC core basis, again, stripping out the r and d cost mainly of our consolidated portfolio subsidiaries, on an EMVC core basis, the group moved to a profit of £1,500,000 in 2025, in large part driven by noncash fair value gains of £1,400,000, principally from two portfolio companies, AMR Bio and Qbot. In terms of our liquidity and cash position, we closed year end with £500,000 of cash and £300,000 in liquid quoted securities.

15:12 Bringing that up to date as of mid May, the cash has increased to £1,000,000 and the listed securities value is around £500,000, partly due to operational progress and also in part due to a unsecured loan facility of £500,000 that we took on post period on favorable terms, which gives us more flexibility to to execute our strategy. Moving on to the next slide. This gives a bit more color and a bit more information on the movement in our directly owned equity investment. So as I mentioned, there was an there was an increase of 9% of £1,200,000 over the year.

15:57 In terms of the upside, we had a few companies with funding rounds at an up round, which were underpinned by continued operational progress. Deep Tech, Wander were notable in that respect. AMR Bio was a notable addition to the portfolio this year. We acquired the assets from Destiny Pharma for minimal cash investment, and then EMVC's fees on that transaction were settled in equity rather than cash, and that led to a £600,000 gain, which really demonstrates the value creation capabilities of the EMV platform. And then on the downside, we took some valuation adjustments to certain portfolio companies based on prudent valuation principles under IPEV and IFRS.

16:48 We also in terms of the realizations figure that we sold a portion of our stake in Nasdaq listed PDS, and there's also a a mark to market adjustment on that based on the Nasdaq listed share price. But overall, a 9% increase in direct equity investments on the balance sheet, which we are quite pleased of. Moving on to the next slide, Ilya, that's probably one for for me to hand back the reins to you on this one. Thank you. Yeah. So, I mean, earlier in the discussion, I flagged the good early results we're getting on the venture build practice, and I want to give you a little bit more detail on that because it forms an important part of what we do and a large part of what we do. So the approach that we have built, a playbook, if you will, is that we are targeting companies that have developed an interesting technology technology platform with really strong IP that have received significant investments in years going by.

17:49 And, again, in the deep tech space, it's not unusual because it takes quite some time for technology to to mature to to those of you who know through to our PRL six, seven, eight, and so on to be to be sales ready. And as often happens in this space, you know, the technology is developed, the IP is there, but for one or another reason, plan a hasn't worked out. And in those situations, and we're very, very selective, but, you know, we come in with the plan b. So we are able to take on such companies either at a low valuation or in some cases, such as Destiny Pharma and AIMA Bio taking the assets out of insolvency to restructure those those companies or set up a new company and thus take significant direct equity stake for for PLC.

18:38 When we, as PLC, invest, we invest only limited amounts of cash or in kind services or in some cases, some EMV CAPITAL PAPER to get the round going, and then we syndicate the rest of the funds needed from our syndicate. Going about it this way, we have had some pretty good, I would even say, remarkable results across six companies. I'll I'll mention in a second. We have had roughly just short of £1,000,000 of cash and in kind investment that has resulted over, I believe, it's a four year period in a 10,000,000 of fair value created, which any way you look at it is is a remarkable result. I'm mindful that the pudding here is once there is an exit and this is realized, but for work in for for work in progress of this investment playbook, it is really promising results.

19:31 Once we have done deal, we combine remember those six boxes I showed you earlier? We combine all of our resources. We combine the corporate finance capability, the fundraising capability. We provide value creation services from our in house team and our various mentors. We rebuild the team. We rebuild the financial model and get the company to the stage at which third party investors can come in. On the back of that, we've raised £12,500,000 at cost so far alongside these businesses, and now each of them has their own development tools. So it's been quite a powerful mechanism, and we believe this really provides a quite a differentiated capability in the listed VC space. And the companies that are part of our venture program include Deep Tech Recycling that I've spoken to in the past, plastic waste chemical recycling, denamed it, lab lab verification system, and a really strong IP that the company is looking to license out. Ventev, who is a heat pump and passive air ventilation developer, Vortex, which is a liquid biopsy company with that we recently moved to Manchester, Wanda Health, digital health monitoring, I'll talk about them in a second, and AMR Bio, where I have a case study for them right now.

20:46 We will continue to do that. We're adding companies selectively to our portfolio, let's say, at the rate of one or two a year, because because we our infrastructure needs to be able to handle it. And we're also looking at when the companies graduate from our program, when they take on third party finance institutional funding or, of course, or, of course, exit. As a case study around MR Bio, here is what we did. You know, we had been tracking this company for quite some time. We through our venture partner model and advisers network, knew of the business. And last year, we made the decision to acquire the primary assets, which is called x f 73 from the the administrators of Destiny Pharma. We did that at a relatively modest amount.

21:32 But what attracted us to the business is, first of all, they had already gone through a a successful phase two b trial for the nasal gel, which is focused on a really mass market around surge protection, which is responsible for a million and a half deaths globally. And in The US alone, it's up to two million surgery patients. So it's a multibillion market in itself. In addition to the primary focus around preventing surgical site infections with with a nasal gel, They also have other applications around potential dermal applications for battlefield wounds and and things like this. So in terms of the guts of the model where we acquired the assets, we syndicated 1,300,000 power network to fund the acquisition. But because we set the the framework and the architecture, we were also able to lock in a two year VCS contract for us as well as a fundraising mandate to continue to support them. Post closing, PLC has 30% fully diluted holding, 30%, and we have already added some fair value direct to the PLC. In terms of the road map of the business, it's what I said earlier. You know, our role is to help the companies from the starting point to prepare them to take on third party institutional independent finance and take them to the next stage. So there's a lot of work happening with the real with the team that we have reassembled, preparing them with the FDA for a phase three trial design as well as exploiting some of the other opportunities we have identified within the company, and there will

23:03 be an update on that in in the in the near term that we post on the business. It's worked for it's working for MR Bio. It's working for deep tech recycling that's in the plastic waste space. It's working for Vortex. It is not about the sector. It's about the playbook that we're able to apply to deep tech companies with high levels of IP and this sort of a the self development profile. So we're very optimistic about this program. I'll tell you a little bit more about some of the other companies. SoftFront that you have heard about in the past, it's a next generation satcoms company, a spin out from Edinburgh University. And their market is really growing very, very rapidly. You will have seen in the markets some significant news in The UK for UK investors and companies in the spate SpaceTech space.

23:54 In in the context of EMV, we have another asset, Oxford Space Systems, that's also quite promising. But in terms of soft funds, they're in the right place at the right time with sovereign concerns, concerns about sovereignty leading to different states and regions driving for their own satellite constellations to join Starlink. That is leading to a exponential growth in the demand for terrestrial antennas that you can fit on aircrafts, UAVs, drones, both in the air, on on on earth and in marine and many other applications. So the market is truly massive. When we invested in SoftBank, the market was very interesting, but a little bit of science fiction. If you remember 2018 and 2019, you know, there was no Starlink at the time. So the time is really right for the company. We've made a significant follow on investment round in December, and this is this is continuing to develop right now. The company has a new chair who is the chair of Seraphim Space Fund, which, of course, has had some good success recently. So, again, good good things happening there.

25:04 Wonder Health has also had a very good year. So they are digital health platform, and they had been looking for the right market niche to develop. And in the end, what has really worked for them is the g o p one therapy space around different obesity treatment drugs using AI. That is a massive market that's estimated at 8,000,000,000 plus in The US alone with up to fifty eight million insured US lives eligible for GLP ones. This is a market that is now scaling massively. And Wanda is augmenting their platform with AgenTik AI, which does work, but in their case, it really is the case, to accelerate the servicing of this market. And, basically, if you take Eurozempix and others, clinical data now is that once you stop, put on back weight, and you need the support of such systems such as Wanda to maintain the clinical the clinical impact.

25:56 So the good news is that last year, they gained a significant new partnership with a major US pharmacy benefit manager. And from a standing start at the beginning of twenty twenty five, they are now close to reaching a million dollars ARR. And, I mean, now not not end of twenty five, but May May, June this year. And within the framework that they've got, there is the potential to grow that to to $20,000,000 ARR over the next couple of years. So truly massive potential. We're continuing to support with with our venture build framework, but the company is now ready to graduate, if you will, as they're planning a £5,000,000 series a round with new with with a new chair, grown grown grown team, and lots of evidence of of growth. So, again, really significant scope for growth here. We have 16 and a half percent of this company, 30% advised. Current valuation is 10,000,000.

26:48 And for those of you who are have exposure in the SaaS space reaching the sort of numbers that we're talking about here, you know you know what that means from a valuation perspective. I'll talk a little bit about our our subsidiaries, Proaxis and GlycoTest. Now I would say, in general, just as a kind of as a guidance of our thinking, our model is not to have subsidiaries. We're not a holding company. We are a VC. And therefore, in due course, we're looking at deconsolidating these companies while protecting shareholder value. ProAxis has had started off with a very difficult year and that has now been recovered. At the beginning of the year, they had some significant supply chain issues that meant they had to stop production, move move suppliers, and re relicense or revalidate their assays.

27:35 That hard work has now been done, and the company has restarted production restarted production within 2025, and they now have a route to profitability on an operational basis later this year or the next year. They have also launched a COPD clinical study with Imperial College that's further going to expand their their market. They also have a they're working with Randox where they've moved to their laboratories where Randox has agreed to take equity for rent and to look at other ways of working together. We're looking to close an equity round for this company in the middle of this year and, again, let them become more and more independent from us. GlycoTest has had a mixed year. They have completed the collection of the blood samples, which is really, really important.

28:23 However, to further progress their assay development in their collaboration with Georgia Tech, they need more money. So we are launching now a fundraise that we're targeting to close within June. We have quite promising results so far in terms of market testing it. And just to flag, given that we own 52.7% of the glyco test, we anticipate post this next fundraise that glyco test will be deconsolidated. So, again, both companies have had a mixed period, but some really strong prospects for them to for progress to be unblocked and for them to So in terms of so I've I've given you quite a bit of detail on the financials, on the portfolio, on our model. I'm going to tie it all back together as we start looking to the opportunity now and and what comes next. Look. We have built a distinctive multi revenue platform, and we've built it bottom up. This is not textbook. It's not business school textbooks up into one, but this is bottom up organic entrepreneurial growing of a of a of a VC platform that is different to what you tend to see elsewhere, but it's also fit for the opportunity we are trying to exploit.

29:35 Working with our boards and a lot of challenge. Okay. So how are you gonna grow it? What comes next? What comes after 200,000,000? We have we have converged on these six strategic pillars of our growth forward. First of all, of course, it's growing the portfolio value, and we're doing it, as I've explained, through two playbooks. One is the venture built that I have explained. Another is co invest where we take minority stakes, but still have active management and work alongside large investors, and that's mostly what we're doing with the market portfolio. Next to that is scaling the funds practice to provide us with the capital so that we can support our growth in our portfolio companies, and we're looking at adding new funding man fund mandates organically. That's us raising money or taking over other opportunities such as we did with market.

30:22 We're looking at multiple return routes. We're not passive. We go out and get stuff, and those are coming from our M and As, IPOs. Of course, we can't be equally active across 70 companies, but for a subset of companies, we have the ability to to support and drive those businesses. And, again, a reminder that for PLC, this is important because you get the direct returns from our direct holdings as well as the carried interest from the AUM that that that is growing, so a diversified set of returns. All of this is not possible in isolation. So we are have built and are continuing to build a high performance platform characterized by strong governance, both as an AIM company, where there's a lot of governance and transparency request for us, which is welcomed by our investors, but also as an FCA regulated firm. EMV CAPITAL PARTNERS, our fully owned subsidiaries, FCA regulated.

31:13 So that makes us means we hope for our investors that that the governance level and transparency is very, very high. We have a high performance team that is incentivized, and you would have seen this morning the announcement for the carried interest scheme that had been under development for many years. But, again, we're looking to build a high performance team that sticks together for the years to come, and we selectively build on that team to deliver the performance that PLC shareholders deserve, scaled through our trusted adviser networks of venture partners and advisers and suppliers. And last but not least, data and AI AI infrastructure. We're not going big in the presentation on data AI, but there is quite a bit of work happening in the background where we are looking at cases where we can apply AI to augment, not substitute augment the work that my team is doing so that we can scale in an efficient manner, which leads to the financial sufficiency point, which Anesh talked you through, which is, you know, it's a discipline spent growing the recurring revenues to fund the the practice with a path to operational green breakeven.

32:13 And finally, across all of that, growing the capital raising capacity of the business across all the investor types we're working with, high net worth investors, family offices, and institutions. The combination of these six pillars and the programs we have underneath all of those, we believe, will make us a winner in the upcoming developments in the venture capital space. But this is about the future. Even today, we believe there is a significant gap and opportunity for investors in terms of where we are right now. Our current market price is hovering around 48 p, $50.50 p with a market cap of 13,000,000. Just several of the opportunities I outlined to you earlier can return our market cap to PLC through the direct holdings. Just one or two of the venture built opportunities I mentioned. So, clearly, there's a massive upside available. But even on today's numbers, when we look at the adjusted NAV figure, and that is to say simply adding the NAV of the of the subsidiaries, Proaxis and Glaukotest to NAV, deconsolidating from a from a cons from a accounting perspective, we end up with a NAV of 29,000,000.

33:21 Another way to look at it is if everything we have is sold at today's fair value, we end up with 39,000,000. So, again, it shows you a significant gap in in terms of where our price is. It's not unusual in in in in the listed VC and holding and and investor trust space. Very clear, you you will have seen players in this space that once the portfolio starts performing, that they flip from a discount to a to a premium. And we're quite optimistic in that regard and have shown that through repeat management investment in the business over the last two years. So in summary, look. We believe we're well positioned to to capitalize from from the current venture capital landscape. There's significant capital gains potential both for what we have now, but also from the model that we are and the playbook that we that we're In addition to that, there is significant and growing carried interest upside from third party AUM growth.

34:20 We have demonstrated over the last few years the path to breakeven where we're very close to achieving that right now. We have a proven value creation model with minimum upfront cash, capital efficiency in practice, and a diverse portfolio through which we can see investment returns in multiple ways. And with that, I'll stop and we can move to q and a. That's great. Thank you very much for presentation. Yeah. Feel free to go straight ahead. Sure. And I'll just flag one point. There was I already saw some questions around how do we get information and participating. Look. I appreciate that there is the story of our platform, and then there is the portfolio companies. And over the last year, we have started to we have started the virtual meet the portfolio on the with our friends at the investor meet company where we have where we got taking the companies we work with through that framework so that you can meet the CEOs of those companies, and you can ask your own questions.

35:14 In addition to that, please follow us on LinkedIn. There's only so many things that make the threshold of an RNS. So if you're only following the RNSs, you'll see what qualifies as an RNS, but you can see a lot more about the news flow from the companies that doesn't make that threshold through LinkedIn. And I'll take some questions. Fantastic. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the q and a tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via our investor dashboard. Ilian, at this point, if I may hand back to you to chair the Q and A, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay.

36:00 Well, maybe I'll start with a question by David. Are you going to run out of money before you become cash positive? And, Anesh, what a great question to start your first presentation as a CFO. So to you. Thanks. No. Good question. Look, David, as we've mentioned in the annual report and in the slides, we're we we have a comfortable cash position. We had £500,000 of cash as of December. That increased to £1,000,000 as of just a few days ago. We've also got some additional liquidity from our stake in PDS, which the value of that has also increased to £500,000. Now we have a range of scenarios that we model and that we track, and we have no plans for capital raising, and, you know, we have multiple routes and avenues for income and cash income, that is. So we are comfortable at the time being. So hopefully, that answers your question in in in in broad terms.

36:57 Thank you. Then a set of questions from from Alex T. How is EMV CAPITAL's venture build model helping drive both portfolio value growth and third party capital attraction? And across the portfolio today, where do you see the strongest commercial momentum? And you've heard my take on it, and so I'll hand over to Ed for for him to give you his take on it. Yeah. Thanks, Celine. So in in I'm just looking at the question. So I'm putting them on the published. I can't see it. It's Sorry. So the first question is, you've spoken about building a scalable diversified platform.

37:50 Where do you think investors are seeing the clearest evidence that that strategy is working? Yeah. So I think it's a it's a really neat question. I think you you would have seen in our detailed annual report that we're broadening our portfolio with market syndicated co investments. So we we act as discretionary fund manager for a portfolio of circa 50 companies for for Martin. It's all in the deep tech and life sciences space. Cambridge based university spinouts and and others across other universities across The UK. What what we have done is and and this is what we mean really by when we when we say elsewhere that we've integrated market thoroughly throughout the portfolio.

38:39 Not only are we actively managing the market fund for its investors, we're also introducing other investors from our syndicate into a number of really exciting proprietary follow on opportunities that arise through the market fund. So what we're seeing is a greater diversity in companies in which our investor base are able to participate, which provides, let's see, further attractive returns potential for us as fund manager of those new investors. Thank you, Ed. Another presubmitted question, which is as EMV targets 200,000,000 AUM, what do you see as the key drivers of the next phase of growth?

39:27 And I I covered some of that in in the presentation. So it's a we believe it's a mixture of simply the organic growth of the portfolio we already have. So, you know, companies like Wanda, SoftFund, as they get through the next value inflection point, their own value will increase. But in terms of adding new assets, we believe it's going to be driving further growth through our EAS fund practice as well as either launching new funds afresh or indeed as we have done with Nathlet Capital, taking on the mandate of existing funds, the capital to be very synergistic to what we are to what we're doing with like minded teams that we're working working together for. So there's a lot of quest sorry. It's loading. There's a lot of questions, so it keeps that's trimming up as as as we start reading it.

40:27 There's a question from from Christopher. Can you provide more detail on the 500 k loan? Who is the lender, and how are the terms advantageous to EMV? I don't think another good one for you. Yes. So this is a lender that's is a significant participates in a number of our portfolio company fundraisings, both an equity investor and a debt investor. Their name is kept confidential, but it's a a high net worth individual. The the terms of the loan are similar products to loans that they would have participated elsewhere in the portfolio. I think the the interest rate published is 11, and there's a sort of an accordion of another 200,000 on top of the 500,000 at the discretion of the lender.

41:22 That's, I believe, a three year term, and it's and no warrants. So if anything, slightly beneficial terms compared to some of the loan terms that our portfolio see. We we particularly liked that and thought it was an advantage to take on that term loan to shore up our working capital. Obviously, lots of deliberations around cost of capital and comparisons between what a debt product and an equity product in the form of a secondary fundraising might have looked like. And we felt that that gave us a nice a lot of flexibility to go and deploy that for working capital purposes and building out our strategic model for the coming year.

42:07 K. Thank you, Ed. So there's a question around what's the current breakdown of your portfolio between deep tech and life sciences. In terms of the companies, you can see that in the presentation, and I believe the presentation will be available afterwards online for you to download. If you're asking in terms of relative values, I would say it's roughly half half. It's not exactly I don't have the exact number. We can Mhmm. Get that. But maybe if I can answer your question in in in a different way. You know, we we we NetScientific, before it acquired EMV CAPITAL, was purely focused on life sciences. And to us, that felt risky because as we have seen, you know, markets go for cycles, and relying on just one of these sectors can be can be dangerous.

42:56 And hence, we diversified life sciences with deep tech and sustainability. And I think that has worked well because we have this ability to wait out the crisis in one sector and while while we focus on another. So on a go forward basis, we're looking at continuing to have this roughly half half split between between the two. There's a few portfolio questions from James Kay. And, James, thank you for tracking these companies quite closely. First one is on SageTech who are indeed doing quite well. They there's, again, a fundraiser underway with some discussions with investors that I want to provide information on that, but the company is very much focused on scaling their revenues and exploiting further the relationship they have with Mars as well as looking at The US market.

43:47 I would say that in that in their specific market segment, they're really well positioned both from a regulatory perspective, but also users as in anestheticians and hospitals want to use their unit. But what the CEO, Ian Linear, of the company has also done very well is he has he has gone into the veterinary space, which he knows quite well, which has less regulatory barriers, and he has scaled sales there. So watch this space. There's also a question a question from James on on Ventev. So there's some good commercial changes happening at Ventev where they found that the passive air ventilation side of the business actually can grow faster, again, by regulatory changes and the government's investment in refurbishing schools.

44:37 There has been some additions to the management team there, and we'll be making an announcement in due course. But, again, we we see it as a positive development. So, James, if it's okay, I'll hold off until that announcement until we provide more information there. The question from Christopher. To truly to truly prove your strategy and playbook, you require one or more significant exits. Do you anticipate any in the next twelve to twenty four months? So, Chris, you're absolutely right. You know, ultimately, this this platform is proven through repeat exits. It's a really important question, so I suggest all three of us to give you our respective takes. And it's not a a pre submitted question, although you can, of course, expect an exit question.

45:25 So first of all, we have two playbooks. One is the co invest, which is what we're doing with Market and others where there's a bigger number of companies, shall we say, but the relative returns are smaller. And then there's the venture built where any one exit can have massive impact on us. Of course, for the co invest, have the Siemens for the venture built, we have more influence. So we have already seen exits through the market portfolio in particular, including a secondary that was profitable and and others that should be announced in due course. And so in that sense, that that is working. You know, the coinvest framework is working and is providing returns back to market funds and in turn is providing back carried interest to ourselves. In terms of the venture build side, we have had some significant, not trivial discussions with for potential strategic discussions. For understandable reasons, I cannot list those.

46:21 But we we know that there is growing interest and there's growing scope for for growth. The other thing to flag is that I think the venture capital industry itself has moved away from a focus only on IPO and m and a is recognizing that there is a change that has happened, and probably it is here to stay. So firms are increasingly looking at proactively driving secondaries. So I think from our perspective, we're not just waiting for the MNAs and the IPOs. We want to build a consistent secondaries liquidity stream to the to back to back to back to POC. It's not as glamorous as an m and a and IPO, but it can be actually very important from a capital perspective. Ed, do you wanna add? Yeah. I I think I would just add some and we've hinted at it in our in our sort of reports of the front end of our accounts that that there's a lot more early stage activity that we've seen over the last six to twelve months with companies being approached by potential suitors, particularly in The US, but but also a bit in Europe.

47:32 So so companies are coming to us and saying we've received this term sheet or we've had an interesting discussion. They're they're they're all a bit opportunistic still, if we're honest, and and we'd be able to exit the portfolio if you just look at the economics at a price. But it it's it's gotta be the right price that that the board is happy with and the shareholders are happy with, and we we believe that allowing the companies to go further along their growth journeys and hit their inflection points is obviously going to put them in a better position for the right sort of m and a discussions. So what what we're really seeing is some m and a discussions coming back on, which is positive, but we're waiting still to see the right sort of m and a discussions if that makes sense.

48:22 We're we're we're not just waiting around. We're actively managing that. So in the background, there's lots of preparation to make sure that the companies are all ready as they can be for approaches. They've all been told to go and find drop a list of people that they think might be interested in them. And so it's something that we're really pushing companies very hard to keep at the top of their agendas. That that's what you'd expect from us as an active manager. And we believe, I think, with a a a bit of brute force, if you like, in that sense, we can generate better discussions and quicker discussions. But in terms of the time frame, that that that I think the question sort of set over the next twelve to twenty four months, you know, we we'd all love it to be seen rather than later.

49:11 And so we'll we'll push as hard as we can do, but but not at the expense of dropping the values too low. And Anesh was a former m and a banker. Must be so many opportunities. No. Absolutely. I think I think it's been covered quite well. And just building on the point, I mean, a fundamental part of our business model is value creation services, and, know, a large part of that is helping companies get ready for potential transactions. So as Ed has mentioned, we're not just sitting around. This is something that we are actively doing, but we're not just going to execute a deal that's not the right price, not the for us and and nor the portfolio. So in terms of timing, it's hard to say, but we are very know, we've maintained VCS for revenues at £1,000,000 per year, and we can, you know, likely see that increasing just given the volume of work we're doing for the portfolio. So watch this space, I would say. I think it's yeah. There's some interesting opportunities that could crystallize.

50:13 Thank you. Now what's really different about this EMC is that there's a number of questions that are showing real, really tracking our portfolio companies. And while some of the questions are difficult, I I I want to thank you all for building up your knowledge of our portfolio because, ultimately, that's where the value comes from. So I'm gonna answer those in a second. But, again, as I flag to you at the end of the presentation, please track the virtual meet the portfolio events we're doing through IMC. We're roughly doing once at one every two months, putting two companies at a time. And over time, we want you as the followers or investors in in a a POC to understand more about our portfolio and understand how each of them are developing. I cannot do them full justice, so hence that opportune hence that opportunity.

51:09 So just a few questions. So from Chrissy, a question on DNAME IT. If you recall, that's the lab quality assurance company where in earlier this year, we indicated the company was in discussions with potential funders for patent licensing, patent litigation, and Chris is asking for an update on that. So there's a fair amount of work developing there. Again, I hope for an announcement in due course, but the company at the moment is maximizing its options, making sure that there's more than one horse in the race in terms of who they work with. In addition to the patent licensing discussions, the company is making good progress with the the commercial pilots for their lab technology, which think of it as a blockchain for blood in terms of providing traceability of these businesses. They're working with some non UK labs to test that technology. So we denamed it.

52:04 It's genuinely two two pots of value being being created. But, again, I appreciate the question, and there'll be more in due course. There's another question around glyco test by James, which is can we have the readout from the glyco test clinical trial? So it is and is it still relevant? It is very much relevant. We see it as a potential multiplier within our portfolio. Again, the company has a specific setup with the investment by Fortune Pharma. They are in The US, so they cannot benefit from EIS investment. So we've we've taken a slightly different approach, shall we say, on how they get funded, and we're quite optimistic that the approach we are taking now will get them funded. And once it does, they'll be able to finalize the validation of the of their assays with Georgia Tech University.

52:57 Once that happens and if the results are are positive, we we anticipate significant value uplift, but they just need to work work through that through that period. There's a question on ProAxis. They had four products on the market before the problem started. Are all four now back on track? I believe it's three out of four are back, and the fourth one will come will come on board soon. And what what's really what's really positive here is that the the customers were willing to wait nine months for this to be resolved. So it just shows how important ProAxis is or ProAxis' technology is for the clinical trial space and that it's not easy to find a substitute. I I think the big one here is going to be looking for the outcome of the COPD clinical study with Imperial College, which, if positive, will, we believe, multiply the market they have because they'll be able to expand into the COPD clinical trial space, which is order of magnitude bigger than what they have been doing so far.

53:56 There's a question by Nick s. How can I get access to Co Invest in your EIS deals? I think it's quite simple. Contact our capital raising team, and, you know, we welcome other high net worth investors to join our syndicate. And that's the beauty of our platform that you have the ability to come in at the PLC level or the coinvestor level depending on your preferences. There's a question on SoftBank and their progress with the OEM agreement. Again, I'd I'd rather not steal the show from from the company, but let me just say they're doing an enormous amount of work both on the commercial and technical side, and I hope that they will make an announcement in in due course. And a few questions from Alex around the model.

54:45 Given the scale of the portfolio, what's the balance between near term monetization opportunity and long term value creation? I think it's an excellent question. As our platform evolves, that's where we want to get it to. We want to get to a point where there is a consistent flow of liquidity from the maturing portfolio while newer investments take time to to mature. We've made an enormous progress compared to where this company was a few years ago. It's it is a different business, but we're not there yet. And, again, part of us moving to our next milestone of 200,000,000 AUM implies that, implies the ability of investing in the next cohort of companies so that that's, you know, just looking at what we have now. You know, once you sell these guys, what are that's left. You know, we're looking at building a genuine platform with the next cohort of companies progressing.

55:34 Okay. I'm mindful of time, so we'll do just a few more questions. There's a question about what company are you most excited about. So I'll take the parent cop out here. We love our children all our children equally. But but besides that, look, our model is different from the classic VC. In a classic VC model, you've got, you know, 20 investments in a fund. Two are the fund returners, two, you make your money back, and the rest die. In our model, we because we are derisking it through the venture build model and other aspects, we genuinely believe that there can be multiple winners. So we're not looking at two fund returners. We we believe there are multiple companies that can more than return the the current market cap. So so I'm I'm I'm genuinely transparently sidestepping your question, James. There's just a, you know, a number of interesting companies. And, again, if I refer you to the virtual media portfolio events, you you'll hear from them directly.

56:33 And I think one one last question. Just going to the remaining questions here. How important is EIS to your growth model? I was answering a question to a journalist earlier today who asked, what do you think about the market space? How is the activity going? And the way I answered it is, first of all, you're gonna be angry with me. I'm going to say something positive about The UK environment. But if you look at The UK, despite Brexit, despite political headwinds, The UK venture capital market accounts for close to half of all of Europe's market. Half. Well, 47% or thereabouts. That is remarkable. There is a lot of excellent technology coming out of Scandinavia, Germany, France, Italy, you name it, Eastern Europe, yet The UK accounts for close to half of the VC industry. This is something really important that we want to build on. Within that, in many ways, because of the EIS ecosystem that has been built out, early stage investment has been difficult, but has broadly survived and certainly hasn't fallen nearly as much as as as you would have seen elsewhere in Europe and elsewhere globally. That's really important because we have preserved our ecosystem. So when the markets turn around, we'll have a cohort of companies that are progressing through.

57:54 Where things have been difficult is around the series a deals, kind of the the the scale up. Growth proper growth with b's and c's has been happening, and then, again, there's a difficulty around m and a and IPO. So from our from our perspective, having this EIS investment practice that we built over the last few years has been absolutely critical in, first of all, helping us to support the current cohort of companies in venture build and elsewhere as they mature, as they as they build up a potential links to institutional investors. Absolutely critical. But in addition to that, for the broader portfolio around market, we're we're we're co investing with various NGO investment groups and other EIS funds. Again, it's it's a very vibrant system that The UK is lucky to have if you look at it at international level. So we anticipate EIS will continue to be important for our growth model, and we hope it will provide significant returns to EIS investors.

58:48 However, we are looking to build up to our capital function, if you will, more access to family office money, more access to institutional investors, and, of course, the PLC aspect. That's great, Ilyan. If I may just jump back in there, and thank you for addressing all these questions for investors today. But, Ilyan, before we direct investors to provide you with a feedback, which I know is particularly important to you, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? Well, look, mean, it's been I know it's been a long presentation, but there's a lot that we do. So for those of you who lasted through this, I I appreciate your your patience and and interest. We really appreciate your support both at PLC level, but also at the underlying company side. Look. It's it's been a journey.

59:34 If you asked us a few years ago, is this exactly how it would end up? You never know with these things. You have to be pragmatic. You have to see what the opportunities are and take them. But overall, we have been consistently deploying this vision of a differentiated VC platform that is not just a fund manager. It's not just an EAS investor. It's not just a POC, but combining the best of the tools that we can have to build what we hope will be a leading, if not b leading, deep tech and life sciences investor. For us, reaching a 100,000,000 as management is it's a step. It's not a destination. It's a step. Reaching 200,000,000 is a step, not not not a destination. We are building a platform. All of us, the ones that you see on on this call and the team in in the other rooms are massively focused and high conviction dedicated to this investment strategy.

1:00:26 There are challenges. There are changes. We have to react to things that are that are developing in the market, but we are very optimistic and bullish on what what comes next. And we want to bring as many of you as possible on the journey. So thank you for your support. Fantastic. Ilya and Anish, Ed, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could you please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.