Albion Capital has closed its 2019/2020 VCT top up offers earlier than scheduled after existing and new shareholder support resulted in full subscriptions totalling GBP34 million. Five trusts in Albion’s VCT range announced their fundraising offers in October. The fundraising targeted varying amounts for each trust as a result of different levels of exposure to substantial exits across 2019. The fundraising targets were: GBP10m for Kings Arms Yard VCT PLC, GBP8 million for Albion Development VCT PLC, GBP6 million for both Albion Enterprise VCT PLC and Albion Venture Capital Trust PLC, and GBP4 million for Crown Place VCT PLC.
The successful fundraising season for the Albion VCTs follows a sustained period of strong investment performance. Over the five years to 30 September 2019 the Albion VCTs returned an average of 8.8 per cent pa (excluding tax relief). Over the last 18 months, Albion participated in 25 follow on investments and 10 new investments in innovative, industry-disrupting technology businesses. This included recent portfolio additions Speechmatics, an automatic speech recognition software company, and Elliptic, a crypto-asset risk management solutions provider.
Recent successful exits include the sales of Process Systems Enterprise to Siemens AG and ELE Advanced Technologies to private equity investor Lloyds Development Capital, generating returns of 10x and 4x respectively for shareholders.
Looking ahead, Albion Capital will continue to invest in technology-driven, high growth companies, with a particular emphasis on its sector specialisms in digital healthcare, automation, digital security and data analytics. The combined value of Albion’s VCTs portfolios will increase to a figure of approximately GBP490 million, diversified across some 70 businesses.
Will Fraser-Allen, Managing Partner, Albion Capital, says: “It is great news to have fully subscribed our VCT offers for a fifth consecutive year. Shareholders have shown strong support as we continue to provide attractive returns across our trusts.
“It is an exciting time to be venture capital investors when the UK is a world leading hub for great technology companies led by inspiring entrepreneurs.”
Stuart Mant, Head of Business Development at Albion Capital, says: “VCTs offer financial advisers and their investors unique access to fast growing, unquoted smaller companies in a closed ended structure giving valuable portfolio diversification along with attractive tax breaks.”
