Molten Ventures H2 2026 Earnings Report

Molten Ventures EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 69
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Molten Ventures Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $17.70 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Molten Ventures Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2026
• Date: 6/9/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 4:30AM ET

Molten Ventures (LON:GROW) is a leading British venture capital firm backing Europe’s highest-growth private technology companies. Our expert investment team stay ahead of the curve, identifying transformative trends and next-generation companies before they break through. We combine multiple pools of capital to invest at all stages of the business lifecycle—from seed and early stage to growth and late stage—focusing on disruptive sectors like Spacetech, Fintech, and AI. Our strategy is simple: back bold ideas, scale them with capital and expertise, and unlock high-value exits—whether through strategic acquisitions, trade buy-outs, or IPOs. Since our 2016 IPO, we’ve delivered strong realised returns, reinvesting into the next wave of innovation—creating a virtuous cycle of growth and value. For more information please visit: www.moltenventures.com

Molten Ventures H2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Molten reported 13% gross portfolio fair value growth and NAV per share rose to £7.60, with management saying the portfolio is starting to recover more strongly toward venture-style returns.
• Positive Sentiment: The company highlighted strong contributions from its core portfolio, which now represents nearly £1 billion of value, with several large holdings such as Revolut, Ledger, ICEYE, and Aircall driving most of the growth.
• Positive Sentiment: Molten said it generated more than £250 million in realizations since March 2024, and all exits were reportedly at or above holding value, supporting the robustness of its valuations.
• Positive Sentiment: The company announced a major uplift from ICEYE’s new €10 billion valuation, which management said lifted implied NAV per share to £8.77 and validates its space-tech thesis.
• Neutral Sentiment: Management is pushing to expand its third-party capital platform across growth, East, and secondaries funds, while also using buybacks and redeployment into NAV-accretive opportunities to narrow the share-price discount to NAV.

Presentation

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

There are now 400 unicorns in the market, and when we talk about secondaries, that's quite an important point, because illiquid parts in the market clearly need liquidity. As companies stay private for longer, that's very much a trend that we feel we can benefit from and support. Globally, we're in the midst of this generational shift in technology, and Europe has been, for many years, a key generator of IP, and so the opportunity for us to invest in these businesses is very profound. The main theme that we're going to be talking to is these structural shifts that are occurring, and I think that's a very important point because these aren't cyclical, they're structural, and it's led to the recognition of the need for European sovereignty and resilience in its defense, but also in the technology assets that it owns.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

The underpinning assets, be that cloud computing or be that payment infrastructure, there's a lot more focus on this and a lot more capital coming into this ecosystem. There still exists a structural gap to capital in the market, and this is exactly in the space where Molten is investing. At the growth stage, we're thinking sort of 20 million+ tickets. Our strategy of growing the PLC balance sheet, but also growing our third-party assets, is really to ensure we can consistently address this part of the market. How do we take advantage of those opportunities? We've built a platform at Molten. We have three strategies for investing. The direct strategy has always been the core of what we do, that's Series A investing, but most of our capital going to Series B companies and the opportunities where the go-to-market strategies have been proven.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Again, that scaling gap where deeper tickets of investment are required. We believe that venture is a distinct asset class, so even if it's a pure portfolio approach for investment managers, we think that owning some access to private companies that are behaving in a differentiated way to other parts of the listed portfolio is an important factor, and there's clearly some resilience which is applied to that. Venture has outperformed other asset classes over the long term. As we know, with venture, there's a big dispersion amongst managers, so putting your capital with a manager that has a 20-year track record through these cycles, we think is a compelling conversation. We also have our secondary funds, which, as I mentioned, we have a deep experience here of investing in this part of the market. We have invested in entire funds and bought out those positions.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

We've done that with Seedcamp in their Fund I and II back in 2017 and 2018. Same with Earlybird in 2019 on their Fund IV and the Digital East Fund. Those deals were really to give us access to key assets that we thought were attractive. In the Seedcamp portfolio, the main one was TransferWise, and then in the Earlybird portfolio, there were Peak Games and smava and UiPath. It gives you a sense of how we look at the portfolios, then we fundamentally value those underlying businesses, and that's how we price these deals. It's providing liquidity to an illiquid part in the market that is the key factor here. To do that well, you need the ability to price the assets, but you also need the network to be able to access the deal flow, and that's something that we've had consistently.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

We've also done the same with individual assets, Trustpilot being a great example, where in 2016, we owned 4% of Trustpilot, and we built that up to 14% by the time of their own IPO, and then we subsequently sold down as it was a public vehicle. Our ability to get access to later-stage, very strong businesses that have a financial profile which should deliver returns in a shorter period of time is something that's compelling. We think now with 400+ unicorns in the market is a very deep opportunity. That's why we've added more strength to the team with the secondaries team we've brought in this year, and that team is going to raise third-party capital for that strategy as well. We'll see more of that team in the market going after these opportunities. That should generate for us more deal flow.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

There's a network effect that occurs between these three strategies of fund of funds investing, where we invest at the earliest stages as an LP into funds, and we get visibility of the underlying companies, and we have proprietary deal flow and access, but also the technical expertise to call upon of those GPs feeding into our direct strategy, and that augments the secondary strategy. I think it's important that when we use the word platform, we think about these three component parts being greater than the sum of their individual parts. Just touching on those strategic priorities that we outlined slightly more than a year ago, what I'm proud to say is that as we go through the presentation today, you'll see the significant demonstration of progress that we've had, the execution we've had against these priorities.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Driving the NAV growth clearly has been an important factor. We've seen that in the results today, also in the announcement this morning with ICEYE. Scaling our third-party capital, we've been very pleased to announce a cornerstone investor for our Growth Fund but also progress with the Molten East Fund. As I mentioned, the secondaries team will be expanding that capital base with their strategy, then redeploying our capital into NAV accretive uses of capital. I think that's critical for us, is that we really think around all those different opportunities that we're creating across the strategies, as well as having buybacks for our own shares, which ultimately allow us to narrow the share price discount to NAV. With that, I'm going to pass you over to the main event. I'm going to leave you to Andy to go through the financial highlights.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

Love that, the main event. It's not often I get called that, which is good. Okay. Welcome everyone. I'm Andrew Zimmermann. I'm the CFO at Molten. This is my second of these annual results now. This has been an even more interesting and active year than the first one. Without any further ado, on to that. Too quick. The three main themes that I really wanted to cover. The first one, sorry, the first one is obviously accelerating portfolio fair value growth. That's 13% for the year, starting to pick up a bit after 2023 and 2024, and 2025 to a degree where it started to recover. Accelerating much more back towards venture-type returns, which is what we want to see in the portfolio as well as long track record. We need to start achieving that in discrete years.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

Then, obviously, the ICEYE news today is a really good start for FY 2027. We've also maintained strong realizations, which Ben alluded to there in terms of the cycle and being able to recycle into NAV accretive opportunities. That has been really important to keep that going. Again, we've also announced this year there have been some partial realizations in Revolut and then also ICEYE today was part of that deal. Again, we're on track already for this year, which is important. Finally, that point about narrowing the share price discount to NAV. Obviously, a year ago, I think our share price was GBP 2.57, so it's recovered a lot from there. It obviously still has a long way to go. We've pushed the bar a little bit higher by pushing the NAV per share a bit higher, but I think that's a great thing.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

Obviously, we'd like to see more share price growth continue and start to compress that NAV again. I'll call out individual points as we go along. 13% gross portfolio net fair value movement, obviously, well up on the 5% previously. Really starting to see that traction start to build mainly driven by the core, and I'll come onto that in a bit more detail. GBP 60 million of FX benefit, which obviously helped there as well this year. Comprised of nearly GBP 300 million of write-ups, and about GBP 120 million of valuation reductions. There's always that net movement, but obviously, really positive that it's substantially up. That's meant our gross portfolio value and net asset value is well up again on the 31st of March last year, GBP 1.5 billion and just over GBP 1.3 billion.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

The cash proceeds from realization, again, building on the previous year where we had GBP 135 million. We had full exits in Lyst and Freetrade, and then partial realizations in Revolut and ICEYE, and then some other miscellaneous smaller ones. That's obviously driven that forward. Important point to note is that they were all at or above the holding value, so that again just proves out that our valuations are robust. We invested GBP 89 million of that cash in the year. We welcomed Duel, General Index, PolyModels Hub, and MAIA to the portfolio. We also did follow-ons into some of our exciting existing portfolio companies like Modo and Manna. They're up in the core now. Again, we'll come onto that, but Modo, for example, we led the Series B in that round, which is exactly the space that we want to be playing in in direct investment.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

We also did a secondary in the Speedinvest Continuation Fund. Again, mentioning that earlier in terms of the secondary strategy and investing in the things that we think are the most NAV accretive opportunities. To that end, we also did GBP 38 million of share buybacks in the year. Our share price was a little bit lower and the discount was wider. We still have about GBP 4 million of the most recent announced buyback tranches left to run, but at the moment, the discount's been compressed and the price has been higher, so we see other investment opportunities as being more NAV accretive ones, and we've been deploying into that. Then, OpEx, we reduced that year-on-year. Our general and admin expenses were just over GBP 24 million, which was down 14% on the previous year. That cost efficiency is important.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

We would want that to not be a drag on the return, but we're still maintaining investment in quality. The secondaries team are a good example. We're being very efficient on our platform, but making sure we've got the right people in place to help us scale and build that sort of third-party AUM business. You can see at 0.5%, we're well below our 1% target. Finally, we ended the year GBP 52 million of cash. Obviously, post year-end proceeds of Revolut are not included in that. There's another GBP 70 million or so of exit proceeds that have been added to that since. In addition, there's about GBP 24 million of EIS and VCT cash that's not been deployed and an undrawn RCF of GBP 60 million. We're in a really good solid cash position and able to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

That means we ended the financial year with a NAV per share of GBP 7.60, which is that 13% up. Obviously, ICEYE news today adds another nearly GBP 1.20 per share to that. Not this financial year, obviously, but substantial. This is just starting to show that our fair value growth is starting to pick up. We target 20% return through the cycle. Our record is 26% return, but obviously, we can't keep standing up year after year and not be hitting the 20% and just talk about the long track record. That is really good to see that starting to spike up. Again, ICEYE news today on its own is probably about 15% in terms, that obviously, in FY 2027. With the rest of the portfolio traction, that should start to be accelerating up, which is obviously, really important.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

Obviously, driven by macro tailwinds as well as the performance of the company, so some of the sectors like space, AI, quantum, are really benefiting from that sort of theme of European sovereignty and resilience. That is those comps are helping to drive the valuations as well as the commercial traction of those companies. It's the core that's really driven the fair value returns, and you can see that nearly GBP 1 billion of the GBP 1.5 billion of gross portfolio value is those core companies. It's about 16 companies, nearly 65% of the portfolio value weighting. They're obviously the more mature companies, the ones that are really the winners, if you like, the Revoluts, Ledger, ICEYE. They're really driving returns and accelerating.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

That 26% is much more what you would expect, again, for venture returns, that's really pleasing to see that come back by the biggest companies in the portfolio, obviously driving that. A multiple, an invested capital of 3.3x. Again, if you add in the ICEYE news from today, that's more like a 4x. Again, really positive. The remaining part of the portfolio are what we call the emerging, which are the ones that are growing up into be the next version of the core and smaller investments, some legacy ones. Then, the fund investments, which is part of the pipeline, which Ben alluded to. The performance in that was a little bit more mixed. The emerging portfolio are obviously the smaller holdings. Quite often, they're not as old.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

The venture model is high risk, high return, so there will be some valuation write downs as we go along. There was about GBP 50 million of that written down in that emerging portfolio, which is over 80 companies, but really driven by three companies with specific events, Robin AI and Schüttflix, which is a German sort of working capital logistics business, which again, has just not quite taken off. The German government have kind of pivoted their spending from construction to defense, and that one wasn't quite in the right place. But overall, the traction is good and there's some positive companies there, which I'll come onto.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

The fund of funds, which is our early stage, our seed stage pipeline, really positive return in the year, which is pleasing to see because those are the ones that are going to drive some of the graduation, if you like, into our emerging portfolio. We use those relationships with the fund to fund managers to build and look for the next opportunities for those Series A and Bs. Then the rest of the portfolio was positive as well. A good overall return. Slightly negative overall, but obviously, well outweighed by the core. Just a pleasing point to note, is that Manna and Modo Energy graduated, if that's the right term, from the emerging into the core in the year. That's really positive. Modo Energy, we led the Series B. We got a really strong conviction in that company.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

Manna, we've backed for a long time, as you probably heard me go on about it many times. That's really pleasing to see them start to hit their inflection points and grow, and us put capital into them that enables them to elevate into the core. Realizations, again, now that's more than GBP 250 million since March 2024. If you add on the Revolut one, that's another GBP 70 million or so, and then an ICEYE secondary, which will happen later in the year, which we talked about. Again, our average return over the cycle, 15%, well above our target of 10%. Same point as the fair value growth, you want to be achieving that target in the discrete years now. Really pleasing to see where we're at for 2025 and 2026, then a really good start already in 2027. We're confident with the progress for that.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

That obviously really drives our evergreen model in terms of generating cash back to the balance sheet to invest in accretive opportunities for our shareholders. Then finally, the fan. Still think this is the best way to present this, but the scale on the right is obviously slightly different to the left because the companies on the left are particularly large in terms of the share of the core. Revolut, obviously, great commercial traction. Customer keeps growing. Customers are over 70 million now. Revenue's growing still really fast. It's profitable. That one's been valued off commercial marks, but also supported by a GBP 75 billion secondary. Happy with that. Again, lots of good news flow about that one. If you read in the press, it sounds like they may be building towards another secondary.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

Ledger, which is the crypto hardware wallet software business, really good tailwinds in that sector, so their comps were helped a lot by that. Ledger itself has been performing really well, revenue growing well, probably a little bit quieter with the war in the Middle East now and the people not doing as much Bitcoin trading as they were, but still on a really good growth trajectory. ICEYE, I don't really need to say too much about that. It's obviously exceptional commercial traction. Really good, very happy with that one. That green one will now obviously accelerate massively. Aircall is an interesting one because that's voice telephony customer relationship software, the kind of thing that you think might be eaten up by AI, but actually they've been buying AI companies and building it into their product, really sort of embedding themselves with customers.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

They specialize in sort of smaller and medium businesses. More than 26,000 clients, growing 25% a year revenue-wise. Actually, a good example of how AI can be an opportunity for these companies. That one's really pleased with. CoachHub was our only sort of write-down really in the core portfolio. That's obviously enterprise software. Coaching maybe isn't the top priority for some businesses when they come to the crunch, so their growth had really slowed down a bit. They've done a bit of a reorg and a restructure, and they're building back to growth. We'd hopefully see that one start to climb back up. Isar Aerospace, there was an announcement today about the new round investment in which Molten are one of the participants. Again, space, really a hot topic.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

They're benefiting from good comps in that sector as well, as well as great technical progress. They actually have their next launch scheduled for next week. I think they have their launch window. So, keep an eye on that. That's a huge technical milestone for them. Finally, I would just call out Riverlane, I think, which is our quantum error correction software one. Again, describes how we play across the sector, where we're in that middle layer rather than the actual quantum computers, the error correction software that plays across all of them. It's making really good technical progress and again, really benefiting from benchmarks and public comp multiples and lots of M&A in that space. So, pleasing overall, you can see a lot of green in the chart, which is what we want.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

The yellow at the end is Modo and Manna, which is our investment into them. Again, really pleasing to see them come up into the core. I think overall, really just a really strong year for FY 2026. Good portfolio growth, NAV per share growth, disciplined realizations again, some progress on narrowing the discount, which obviously, we're still going to work on obviously to this higher NAV now, and then the focus on the current year, which Ben is going to come on to in a lot more detail, is about building this third-party platform and really continuing to execute on all the things that we said we would do. Thank you.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Thank you, Andy. I'm going to go through a bit on the portfolio, and one of the points I want to reiterate is how we approach our investment thesis. As people know, we invest across four broad sectors of tech, consumer enterprise, hardware, deep tech, and digital health. They also cover these broad sub-sectors, and so, we have domain expertise within the group for each of these sectors, fintech, cyber, quantum, energy transition, space, crypto and blockchain, and health tech. These are all of the structural drivers of growth that are globally disrupting markets, and we feel that our investors should get exposure to these. It's almost impossible for them to get that exposure through the public market, certainly to the same degree.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

It's very pleasing today when we have news of a company like an ICEYE, where we've been investing since 2018, and people can start to see that growth coming through as those structural shifts emerge as key drivers for growth in those sectors. Balance of the portfolio, we believe, is very important. When we're investing in these companies, it's for the long term. The average hold of our investments is going to be 8-10 years, let's say, and therefore, balancing your investments across those sub-sectors is going to be an important feature. I think that it allows us to be more consistent about how we can realize assets, more consistent about where those returns are going to come from, effectively providing a portfolio with more shots on goal.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

That kind of structural growth themes that are reshaping our economies is really where we're trying to invest as a venture investor, investing for the upside. The other factor that's relevant to that is, of course, AI. We're seeing a huge amount of disruption in the public markets from AI taking market share from SaaS businesses or the perceived threat, certainly. We've done an analysis of our own portfolio to see where that might be disrupted. The work that we've done identifies actually majority of our portfolio will have opportunities from AI. We think that the public markets have clearly had a moment where the pendulum swings too far one way and everything gets tarred with the same brush.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

When you actually look at these underlying companies where they have enterprise SaaS models, quite a few of those businesses will still have resilience in the events where they have critical client relationships, critical infrastructure for those enterprises that they're servicing, but also where they are bringing proprietary data sets. We provide that lens to our own portfolio. Once we've had that investment across those sub-sectors, and particularly where we like to invest in the enabling layers of technology, you can see that the majority of our portfolio is a net beneficiary. That's 75% we anticipate. This is where AI compounds an existing data or distribution or workflow advantage. We have 15% of the portfolio that we have categorized as manageable headwinds. This is where there's opportunities and threats.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Andy outlined Aircall as a good example of that, and if the companies react well, then we believe that that can embed their existing customer relationships. Then, the final we see as neutral is the 8%. Why do the winners keep winning? What is it that compounds in this area? For us, those infrastructure layers, for example, a Thought Machine core banking system, or Form3, which is payment systems, or even something like a Riverlane, which is software across all of the quantum layers, these aren't going to be disrupted by AI. They can add AI into their development, and so the kind of 0:1 is what we see as being accelerated with AI, but the 1:10 is those governance relationships, those customer relationships.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

I think the ownership of that customer end relationship, all that critical infrastructure, is what is going to be a point of differentiation, both in private markets, but also in public markets, and we see that across our portfolio. I actually believe that our portfolio is well-positioned to benefit from this. I think that that strategy of investing across sub-sectors, and having infrastructure layers and enabling layers to technology is proving to be very critical at this point in time, and that favors our portfolio that we've built. Just touching on some of the drivers of that core growth that Andy spoke to, over GBP 1 billion in value in the core, or just under GBP 1 billion in value, sorry, in the core, but 2/3 of the portfolio value occurring there.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

These companies are more mature and therefore, we're seeing the growth slowing to some extent, but that growth of forecast 30% is still well above what you would see in public markets. This is underpinned by strong gross margins, over 70%, and seven of the 17 companies in the core are profitable. It's very pleasing to see that resilience in that group and the continued growth, and that it's driving those gross portfolio value and NAV returns. Andy's touched on the emerging in some detail, so I won't spend too much time, but we've given a bit more clarity on the GBP 200 million of direct investments, how they break down in terms of their revenue maturity, and also seeing the consistency of how we invest across each of these sub-sector themes.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

It's a longer tail of companies, but over GBP 200 million of value and then another GBP 150 million of value in the fund of funds. It gives people clarity on what's below the core. Much of these companies support that occurs here is where the team will spend a lot of their time. These are the earlier stage businesses where the active management will make a significant difference, and so we're working with those companies to try and grow them but also working with them if they're not going to be companies that move into the core to recycle capital and ensure that all investors and founders come out with a good outcome.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

I think we can all agree that space is having a bit of a moment in the technology arena. If you think about what's driving that, our investment thesis, with ICEYE was based on the need for commercial constellations of satellites that can improve the intelligence that comes from optical imaging and synthetic aperture radar imaging. In this case, the key benefit of their technology is that it can take images of the Earth through cloud cover and at night. Now, ICEYE is expanding that sensor suite to include things like optical and also the ground data stations that interpret the data. What they've proved is that they're able to be the provider of choice to governments, and that's been the key driver of what's changing their profile of revenue growth.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

In the 2024 period, they had around GBP 130 million of revenue. That expanded to over GBP 250 million last year. This year, 2026, forecast over GBP 500 million and expanding to over GBP 1 billion next year. Those are the financial profiles that's driving the uplift in their valuations as well as, of course, the supporting multiples from other space tech businesses. Their announcement today, a financing round at a EUR 10 billion valuation, has obviously uplifted our own NAV per share. It's not very often in the public markets you put out results that are already stale, but there we go. It's a good news story. Our NAV of GBP 7.60 has risen to GBP 8.77 implied at the valuation of that round. We'll obviously work through our normal processes in September, but very much a strong increase for us. ICEYE is not the only business that we've invested in.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Isar Aerospace is the German rocket launch business. That point on European sovereignty, NATO sovereignty, really feeds through to these companies. Isar will be the company we believe that can get to orbital launch and give the ability for NATO countries to launch their own satellites. There's clearly a bottleneck. We're seeing that in the SpaceX valuations. SpaceX is now booked up for launch for about three years, and there's a fairly active secondary market for those slots as well. If we can get Isar to have success with their subsequent launches and be able to prove repeatable access to orbit, then they will clearly have a strong valuation tailwind that goes with them.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Then, the other company that we've also been investing in for many years is a British business, SatVu. Again, it's a satellite business, low-Earth orbit satellites, but their technology is distinct because it's thermal imaging. If you're a nation-state or a defense organization or even a commercial organization, having the images of the Earth and then being able to see what's happening with the thermal images, you almost need to be able to align those two component parts. We think that this ecosystem will start to consolidate into different sensors that allow for the data to be acted on in real time. We're very excited about this area. It's already 9% as of the year-end of our portfolio. It's important for us to be able to demonstrate that all of those sub-sector themes that we've been investing in are giving our shareholders a great look through to exciting trends.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

One of the other trends that we've been investing in for quite some time is fintech. It is maybe not getting spoken about quite as much as it was, but still very much a powerful driver of growth in our portfolio, the largest asset being Revolut, of course. They've come out with their own news over the weekend, or at least Bloomberg have come out with some news referencing them over the weekend, rather than the company. Largest component of this 25% is Revolut, with GBP 175 million of fair value and we sold down a GBP 63 million post the period end but still remains one of our largest assets and continues to grow well. In the retail consumer side, we invested in a few assets. We didn't think this was a winner-takes-all market. It's such a deep market opportunity. We did invest in N26, Zopa through the Forward transaction, we have exposure to.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Also, not just thinking about the neobank exposure, but how we can have financial inclusion through entities like Crowdcube, that we've been an investor for many years and on the board of, and also smava in Germany, which is a consumer financing company. We then had a look at how would the incumbent banks need to react. The key differentiation of competition here was the neobanks had a much cheaper technology stack, which allowed them to engage customers with a better user experience, but also a lower cost per customer. We invested in Thought Machine, which is a core banking system servicing Tier 1 banks. We also invested in Form3, which is a payment architecture. This is great examples of those payment and core banking infrastructure layers where we like to invest in those tech-enabling themes.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

FintechOS is another example. Low-code, no-code banking for other financial institutions, non-bank financial institutions that want to spin up their own financial products. These are a lot of the architecture that allows some of these consumer-facing products to be driven. Finally, I'm going to touch on the outlook for the coming year. It's been quite a fast start to the year. I don't think we can underestimate that European sovereignty tailwind in the portfolio. As I mentioned, I think AI is a tailwind in the portfolio. There was clearly a period where everybody wanted exposure to pure enterprise SaaS themes. I think now these infrastructure themes, this investment across sub-thematics, which are being supported by this move for government to spend more on defense and resilience, is really supporting what we already have exposure to.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Post the period end, we've mentioned it already, the realization in Revolut, that drives more capital, that allows us to make new investments. Some people have already mentioned that they've seen Isar Aerospace announcing a new funding round today that we've participated in. This is exactly where we want to be supporting those core companies as they inflect their growth and put meaningful investment tickets to work with this capital. We have a cornerstone investor for our Series B fund. We think it's very important to grow that third-party capital, so having that cornerstone in place is something that we'll announce more detail on in the coming weeks. Clearly, getting that third-party capital strategy moving, I think differentiates us as a business, one, for our ability to consistently deliver on high-quality companies, because we have the depth of capital to do that.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Also, to drive fees back into the PLC vehicle, which offsets our cost base. Also, I think it endorses us as an investment team, having that read across with more capital coming in. Isar funding round this morning, clearly a fantastic uplift in their valuation. This is borne out of their execution as a business. It's really plaudits to them as a company and how they've executed, but also how they've been led by Rafael and had that leadership, which has driven their ambition, and I think they're very much now the number one player in that ecosystem globally and can expand that even further with those defense budgets increasing. That NAV accretive use of capital point, this is our guiding star for how we think about realizations, how we think about reinvestment, and how we think about share buybacks.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

We're very much trying to drive that NAV, so announcing today that we've had a further uplift of 15% on the NAV is clearly something we're very happy about. As I mentioned, tailwinds. The capital that will come into this ecosystem will be driven by governments, but it will also be driven by pension funds. We haven't touched on it too much today, but the NAV, sorry, the Mansion House Accord pensions bill that came through Parliament a few weeks ago, and the general kind of momentum that's been there, has been very slow to come, but there is momentum, and we feel that as an entity that has a public market listing, we have the governance, we have a level of relative scale, and we've proven that we can manage co-investment pools of capital.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

We think that our Growth Fund is very attractive for pension capital, and giving exposure into pan-European investments. We're hopeful that we can build out our AUM and our asset base even further. I think with that, we will move to questions from the floor. Thank you, everybody, for attending and for listening and for following us. It's clearly a great moment of pride for us to be able to come and speak to you with great delivery and execution.

[Operator]

Thank you very much, Ben and Andrew. We'll start with questions in the room, then switch to those online. For those joining us virtually, please submit your questions through the platform.

[Will Larwood, Analyst at Berenberg]

Thanks. Will Larwood from Berenberg. A couple from me. Obviously, benefiting from the space exposure this morning, just how are you thinking about that sector going forward, in particular, sort of thinking about valuations with more capital sort of in that sector? Second part of that, obviously, you mentioned the three areas that you're exposed at the moment. Are there any other areas that you're thinking within the space theme that you're looking at? Then, second question, just in terms of the exits that you've done in terms of Revolut and ICEYE, GBP 85 million, what can we expect for realizations in FY 2027? Second part of that is, most of your realizations so far have been secondaries, rather than sort of M&A type trade sales, can you give us a little bit more indication on how the exit market is evolving outside of secondaries?

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Sure. Maybe do them in order. I'll do the space one first. We'll touch a bit more on the realizations. I think initially when you have such a very rapid shift as we've seen over the literally probably a year for governments changing their behavior and the capital flowing into a certain sub-sector of technology, it's the incumbent players that are going to benefit most. I think we've seen that occur. The incumbent players, like an ICEYE or an Isar, will then look to how they can capture market value, so their models will evolve over time as well. I was in Finland last week with the ICEYE team, seeing some of their production plants, but also hearing the strategic updates from the management team.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

They will add additional sensors onto their capability, and they will also manage that customer relationship to provide them with the intelligence that they need to service their own defense and resilience. We'll see those companies adapting. I think that kind of sense of what can their market share be, how can their financials move alongside that, is really how we think about it from a valuation perspective. Yes, the multiples of comparable public peers have moved, and that's been supportive. You could argue they've moved from a very low base. It's really then us having a look at the recurring nature of revenues and trying to anticipate how far these companies can grow and scale. If we think about new investments in that ecosystem, there are a lot of companies coming through. The U.K. is very strong in space.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

It has laboratories across Oxford, for example, where it's got labs focused on space. There's a lot of companies at the Harwell campus there. Southampton's already had quite a lot of space technology coming out. It's one of those areas that when you shine a light, you realize actually the U.K. is very strong at these areas already. As we've seen, coming out of different laboratories across, in this case, for ICEYE, Finland, the technology is there. Those companies will create, or new companies will create new opportunities as well. If you get into the space ecosystem, there's all of those adjacent supply chain components. I think in the public markets, Filtronic has been a great success as part of the SpaceX supply chain.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

We'll continue to monitor that and think about how they can capture market share very much in the same way we do for any new investment. In terms of realizations, we have been trimming where we can get access to capital and secondaries. We think that that's just a prudent portfolio management approach. Most of our realizations, I would say 85%, are through trade sales, and you will see that with single asset sales. We do get interests on our assets on a regular basis. Some of it transacts, some of it doesn't, price is wrong or for whatever reason. We just continue on that same approach of managing actively the portfolio. Certainly in the core, you can see almost a GBP 1 billion of value, quite mature companies. We would expect some of those to transact. When exactly it happens, what's the perfect timing? We don't know.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

We had Ledger saying that it wouldn't go to public markets for an IPO. It was rumored that they would, but some of those IPO windows, of course, you understand better than me, but some of those IPO windows have to be favorable to make those transactions happen. If it's a pure M&A scenario, it's more about the acquirer, where they are in their own technology stack, what they're trying to achieve with the company's technology that they're bringing in.

[Conor Finn, Analyst at Barclays]

Hi, it's Conor Finn from Barclays. A couple from me as well. Firstly, on the capital raising. How much should we expect maybe over the next 12 months across, say, Molten East, the Growth Fund, and the secondaries? Secondly, in relation to portfolio construction, obviously you've got a diversified approach. Would you be happier given, say, recent developments, running a more concentrated book, say, in future?

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

I might touch on those in reverse order. If you'll see, with Isar as an example, and then Modo Energy Series B investing, this is us putting more capital in at the point where we've got confidence and they're growing and scaling their operations. More investment into those core companies at the right time is certainly what we focus on, and that's where I'm directing the team. More Series B investing, but also doubling down on our winners. That's certainly the strategy. I would like to narrow the portfolio a bit further. We've been working on that over the last two years. It is coming down, but kind of conceptually, a portfolio of around, say, 60 companies of which 20 are the most valuable, and we keep doubling down on those assets as they scale, is the way I would like to do that.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

I think we've made some progress in that area through this year, and you'll see more of that coming together. In terms of the third-party capital, for the Growth Fund, we think about that where an average Series B investment in Europe is around GBP 20 million, I'm talking. To put a portfolio together, you want 10+ assets, so let's say, it's 10, 12, 15. At the 10-12 level, you want to have a portfolio size that can manage across that kind of portfolio construction point of different assets, but you also want to have the depth of capital. At GBP 20 million each, you're probably talking at least GBP 200 million to get the fund going. We would then want to have roughly 30% of follow-on capital into those companies.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

The way I think about the fund is GBP 200 million to get it going as a first close, ideally getting it to GBP 300 million+ thereafter. I think for a first fund, clearly you could go beyond for growth funds, but for a first private fund, that would be a great success. In terms of the Molten East strategy, I think they will close probably sub-EUR 100 million in the first instance, but then that will grow on second closing to take them over EUR 100 million, and that might push up to, say, EUR 150 million. For the secondary strategy, they're targeting EUR 150 million in the first fund. The depth of that opportunity is significant, and I think that that can grow substantially beyond there over time. The one thing I'll always reiterate on private funds, the time horizons are extended. It just takes a long time to raise them.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

I don't want anybody to be asking me in September, "Where's that GBP 450 million we talked about?" It does take time, but we'll update on progress as we travel, and we're certainly seeing great momentum there.

[Operator]

I believe that's all the questions we have in the room. Sam, over to you online.

[Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co]

Yes, several online. Hopefully you can hear me okay.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

It's great. Thank you.

[Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co]

First one is from Matthew Lloyd at BNP. He says, "When would you expect to see U.K. pension fund money deployed into U.K. VC? Do you have a view on the magnitude of flows from pension fund money into venture capital over the next five years?"

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Just to give a bit of context, U.K. pension funds on the DC side, so this is defined contribution side, when the Mansion House Accord came out, they were talking about GBP 500 billion of assets growing to GBP 1 trillion by 2030. This is kind of the magnitude of the pool. You then have to look at how much of that will go into private markets. The first signatures were talking about 5%, and that grew to 10% across private markets, so not just into the equity side. Into venture will be a smaller component, but already, you can see that it's kind of tens of billions of opportunity to come in, and these funds have next to no exposure so far. The ABI, the Association of British Insurers, have polled their members, and that percentage went from 0.36% up to 0.6%.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

When you're talking about a target of getting to 5%, there's a long way to go, clearly. There is momentum there. The pension bill has moved through Parliament, and the local government pension funds are being amalgamated. They're trying to create pools of capital that can support the teams that have the experience to invest in private markets. The processes are underway. What could that look like if they're going to hit their targets by 2030? There's clearly a lot of work to be done, and I think we are starting to see some movement there, but it's still incredibly slow.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

When the UK Private Capital polled their members, there was a lot saying, "We're not actually seeing great traction at all." It's still to come, but I believe it will, and I believe it has to, and it's really providing exposure to those pension fund members to this growth that we're seeing in the private markets, and also balancing of portfolios across different asset classes. I think there's enough momentum that it will happen.

[Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co]

Thank you. Next one from Milosz Papst at Edison Group. "Can you provide some additional detail on how ICEYE develops its data platform and analytical insights for its customers?"

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Yeah, that's a good question. Obviously, with the 70 satellites in orbit, you have this synthetic aperture radar technology, so they can take images of the Earth. ICEYE are then providing a technology on the ground that allows that data to be interpreted, so they can see on one screen where the satellites are in geostationary orbit, and then they're working out sort of low-Earth orbit. Then, they're working out which of those satellites is best able to take the images that the customer wants to take. They will take those images, and they will use AI to interpret those images.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

If it's military buildup, which is a very obvious case, in Finland, they ran some NATO military exercises, it was able to show exactly on the battlefield to the generals the military hardware was building up, what was moving, what wasn't moving, and it was able to identify what type of equipment they were looking at. Some of those generals were feeding back, saying, "We've never had anything this capability." Warfare is moving much more into the visual on-screen aspects and decision-making in real time, but you can only do that with this technology. The ICEYE technology that allows the customer to interpret the data is as important as getting the data itself.

[Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co]

Thank you. Another one from Matthew Lloyd at BNP. He says, "Given the rapid commercialization of ICEYE and the fact it owns the data, are you beginning to see investment opportunities in new companies and business models that use that data?"

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

It was interesting that the first use case for ICEYE that we were investing in was a commercial use case that continues, and there's a huge amount that they can go after here. In the flooding and fire scenario, they were taking images of the Earth, looking at impacted buildings, and selling that data to insurance they could pay out and quantify their losses. The Brazilian government were using it for deforestation in the Amazon, for example, as well. You could use it for a whole different swathe of use cases that they're looking at. Actually, ICEYE themselves are creating those products that the customers can use to interpret the data.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Yes, I think as more data becomes available, just as we're seeing with AI, the interpretation of that data is becoming more advanced, and that's leading to new company creation of products that are available for enterprises.

[Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co]

Thank you. Two from Tintin Stormont at Deutsche Numis. First one is, "Are there sub-sectors that you want to particularly double down on, and can you talk about the investment opportunity set available in these sub-sectors-new follow on?"

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Sub-sectors, yes. The team are very much focused on, I think we had a slide at our Investor Day in February, on AI infrastructure, so the middle layer that enables the data coming from large language models to be interpreted with the right levels of governance and the right kind of speed and accuracy, but also, thinking about the kind of incredible cost that's occurring with the data usage on AI. There's some middleware areas, AI infrastructure, that they're very excited about. We're also looking into the fintech space at the kind of next iteration, so things like stablecoins, obviously, but also disruption in the wealth management space. We're seeing quite a lot of activity there. And then, this kind of theme of critical infrastructure.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Everything is AI-enabled, critical infrastructure in digital health, for example, companies like Deciphex that we've invested in a few years ago, whether it's creating an AI platform for pathology or even more recently with IMU, where it's interpreting the data for immunology and layering on that AI capability. There's a lot more to go in those areas.

[Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co]

Thank you. Tintin's second question is, "Could you chat through how you think about the ideal amount to sell down in assets you clearly still believe in and back? Would this change much once you have more third-party AUM?"

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Yeah, it's a great question because I think it really unlocks the breadth of opportunity that we have with the platform we've built. If we think about, in the scenario of portfolio management, first of all, when do we sell down assets? We're thinking about, one, what is the value that's being offered today? Is it tomorrow's price today? Can the company go a 2x, 3x return from there? So, thinking about it in the context of our cost of capital. Then, the second layer is thinking about the shape of the portfolio and ensuring it remains balanced. We're not outsized to one individual asset, and so we become a look-through. We've always managed positions like Revolut in that context. The other lens that we're looking at is kind of where's our discount to our share, to our NAV, so the share price discount to NAV.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Clearly, if we're doing a drive capital to buybacks, it's the opportunity cost of that capital, where can we use it? There's kind of a few component parts to any of those decisions. As we build out the third-party capital, I think that broadens the opportunity for selling from EG the PLC to create the liquidity to a third party, and we remain the manager of that asset. So then, you're creating more AUM through your own ecosystem. I think that's something that will change over the next few years. Similarly, with follow-on into assets, it might be PLC capital, if that's the right thing for the PLC shareholder, it might be third-party capital that comes into those companies, so we can manage the stages and opportunities in a different way.

[Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co]

Thank you. The final two questions on the webcast come from Alex Trett at Winterflood. Firstly, he asks, "Can you provide further details or a breakdown on what the valuation uplifts were upon realizations beyond at or above holding value?"

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

That sounds like an Andy question to me.

[Andrew Zimmermann, CFO at Molten Ventures]

I think we put them all in our RNSs in terms of what they were. I'd have to go back and check them. I don't have them to hand, but Lyst was a smaller one, just above 1x, I think. Freetrade was higher. I can't remember what it was now. Then, Revolut 20x, for example, 21x, so.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

I think what the one point here is that when we're valuing the assets, we're clearly fair valuing them. We'll move them up to the balance sheet date to an appropriate value. We always try to be slow to move them up, basically ensuring that you see them in line with the commercial traction, and then we're quite quick to move them down. That's been demonstrated over time. As we sell those assets, we're selling them for an uplift. In each individual asset's case, it depends clearly where we were holding it at the time and whether we're getting a strategic premium for that asset. Today, we've seen ICEYE moving up 200% because it's moved very rapidly, and we'll see that in different scenarios.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

We don't tend to put out an average uplift on the assets because arguably, especially according to our auditors, if you're fair valuing them, you should have them pretty close to that anyway. Of course, you get upside surprises in technology like we've had this morning.

[Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co]

Thank you. Very final question from Alex is, "Can you provide any guidance on what today's Isar Series D announcement will have on a portfolio in terms of GPV and uplift?"

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

We'll put our own statements out on that probably tomorrow. There's a lot of news flow today, obviously, Isar's announcement's gone slightly later in the morning. For us, it's an investment round, so we're putting capital into the business. That's really just new capital, reducing the cash and increasing the portfolio value. We'll talk to that in more detail, but it's more about us doubling down to Conor's original question, doubling down on companies we believe in, putting more capital to work where we can see that upsized opportunity.

[Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co]

Thank you. That's it for questions.

[Ben Wilkinson, CEO at Molten Ventures]

Brilliant. Thank you. Super. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate your time this morning. Lots going on. We'd like to sequence our news flow better, it's not always in our choice, in our gift, rather, but it's clearly very positive and gives us a great deal of momentum as we come into the new financial year. Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Andrew Zimmermann, CFO
• Ben Wilkinson, CEO

Analysts

• Conor Finn, Analyst at Barclays
• Sam Austrums, Manager at Sodali & Co
• Will Larwood, Analyst at Berenberg