Draper Esprit pleased with performance as it seeks further opportunities

Venture capital company Draper Esprit updated the market on its current trading on Wednesday, telling investors that the year ended 31 March was “transformational”, adding that in the first four months of the current year it had continued to build on its positive momentum with “strong progress” across the portfolio.

The AIM-traded firm, which was holding its annual general meeting, said that since 1 April it had invested £22m across six portfolio companies, and a further £6.5m from our EIS/VCT funds.

That included a further investment of €7m (£6.3m) alongside Earlybird Digital West into Berlin-headquartered digital banking company N26 as part of its recently-announced $170m round, which follows a previously announced €5m investment alongside Earlybird before the year-end.

Draper Esprit said that latest funding round would enable the “neobank” to launch into the United States market.

The company also invested a further £2.2m into machine-learning business Realeyes, which measures emotions through facial recognition technology, and €2.5m in Aiven, which it described as a cloud technology company developing a portfolio of “database-as-a-service” products, alongside Earlybird Digital West.

“As part of our fund of funds strategy, the company invested in the first closing of Adara Ventures' third fund, Adara Ventures III,” said chairman Karen Slatford.

“Based in Spain, Adara Ventures is an established venture capital firm with a focus on deep tech companies.”

Slatford said that, including the previously-announced partial realisation of Transferwise, the firm had generated a total of £21.7m of realisations since 31 March, including escrows.

The company had sufficient investment capacity for the coming year, she added, with cash resources of £47.9m and an additional undrawn £50m revolving credit facility.

“It remains vital for Europe's economic and social health that the best technology ideas are supported with capital and advice.

“As one of the most active VCs within Europe, we are committed to playing a vital role in this, providing privately owned, high-growth companies with the capital, guidance and support they need in order to realise their global growth ambitions.”

Karen Slatford said the European venture capital market was “maturing”, and companies were seeing increased opportunities to gain access to larger pools of capital as they seeked to stay private for longer.

However, she claimed more needed to be done in order to ensure that Europe could compete on an international level with the US, China and other markets.

“Our disciplined approach to investing, the growth and scale within our portfolio and our business continue enabling us to play a role of continuing significance in the development of the European venture capital market, while delivering long-term, sustainable returns for our shareholders. We therefore look forward to the future with confidence and optimism.”