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51. Bull, Bear & Beyond – Molten Ventures: executive interviews: Realisations image

51. Bull, Bear & Beyond – Molten Ventures: executive interviews: Realisations

S1 E51 · Bull, Bear & Beyond by Edison Group
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5 Plays10 months ago

In this interview, CEO Ben Wilkinson discusses Molten Ventures’ successful exits in 2024, which exceeded the £100m target, releasing £124m in capital through four main transactions:  Perkbox (1.3x return), Graphcore (slight loss but at book value), Endomag (nearly 4x return) and M-Files (7x return).

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About ‘Bull, Bear & Beyond’

Bull, Bear & Beyond': features candid conversations with senior executives and from our own team of experts from across industries, exploring strategy, innovation, and the opportunities shaping their markets and 60-second pieces are a compressed summary of content designed to convey our message in a single, easily shareable hit.

About Edison:

Edison is a content-led IR business. We believe quality investment content should inform all investors, not just brokers. Our mission: engage and build bigger, better-informed investor audiences for our clients.

Edison covers 50+ investment trusts, read about them here: https://www.edisongroup.com/equities/investment-companies/

Original interview published on 10/02/2025 and reposted as a podcast

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Transcript

Reflecting on a Successful 2024

00:00:06
Speaker
To start with, you've you've had a successful 2024, a number of successful exits, um releasing about 124 million of capital. Can you just discuss those exits that you achieved over the course of the year?

Significance of Liquidity and Asset Sales

00:00:20
Speaker
Yeah, as um I think everybody recognizes, um providing liquidity into our evergreen balance sheet is is an important feature and with these realizations, but also crucially um selling our assets above our holding value and proving the the fair value that we have them in the books.
00:00:38
Speaker
And so that cadence of of activity is as over the years that we've been listed been an important feature for us.

Major Transactions and Balance Sheet Impact

00:00:45
Speaker
And in aggregate, we've um delivered 600 million back to our balance sheet.
00:00:50
Speaker
And last year, we started the year giving some guidance to say we were targeting 100 million to come through. And then with four main transactions, as you say, we've delivered up to the interim period and just beyond, 124 million coming

Perpbox Investment Outcome

00:01:06
Speaker
back. First one was Perpbox, which had been in our portfolio since 2016, 2017. Then we continued to support the business as it scaled.
00:01:15
Speaker
ah We sold that and announced it in the sort of early part of our financial year, so in the April-May period.

Graphcore Market Performance

00:01:23
Speaker
of 24 and that delivered a multiple uninvested capital of of about 1.3x but crucially above again the holding value and um when we talk about these exits it's important to put them into context of of the range of of venture capital returns and so um um when we have Graphcore as an example which was an asset in in the portfolio for several years
00:01:49
Speaker
had had a good run up in terms of valuation and then ultimately didn't quite deliver on the the market potential that we were seeing for for a variety of reasons. And that's the nature of technology investing. Ultimately, you'rerere you're placing investments and for future opportunity and sometimes they come to fruition and and sometimes not. In the case of Graphcore, we got slightly less than our money back out. But again, at the holding value, we had it in the books.

Endomag Sale Success

00:02:14
Speaker
um And then with Endomag, there was ah a subsequent sale from a medical device company that had been in the portfolio for a similar amount of time since around 2017 and that delivered just under a 4X multiple for us in the period.
00:02:31
Speaker
And also crucially returned capital, not just to our public balance sheet, but to our EIS and VCT shareholders, which proved the the value of those co-investment pools of capital. So we had about 36 million coming back from that transaction.

M-Files Exit and Returns

00:02:46
Speaker
And then the larger one M-Files. That had been in the portfolio for a longer period of time. This was an intelligent document management um company and that had been in since 2013. We continue to to back and invest in the company and and and support them on that journey.
00:03:05
Speaker
and um the exit there was a private equity recap as they go to that next stage of their of their their growth and and um that delivered back to us a 7x multiple and almost 50 million of capital.
00:03:19
Speaker
So that was a nice spread within those four and I think actually the the cadence of them and the kind of regular news flow that has generated has been imported in the year as well. as being able to recycle that that that capital into our capital allocation policy.