TIDMGROW
RNS Number : 8198L
Draper Esprit PLC
24 July 2017
For release: 24 July 2017
Draper Esprit plc
("Draper Esprit" or "the Group")
INVESTEE COMPANIES RAISE A TOTAL OF GBP54 MILLION WITH GBP25
MILLION FROM DRAPER ESPRIT
Draper Esprit (AIM: GROW, ESM: GRW), a leading venture capital
firm involved in the creation, funding and development of
high-growth digital technology businesses across Europe, announces
that since its successful fundraising eight weeks ago, its
portfolio companies have raised a combined total of GBP54 million
of additional capital, of which funds managed by the Group
contributed a total of GBP25 million.
Simon Cook, CEO of Draper Esprit said:
"We invest in growing technology companies across Europe and
source the best deals from thousands of companies, providing them
with the capital, expertise and networks to fuel their growth.
Earlier this year we announced that in aggregate the group had
raised in excess of GBP160 million of new patient capital across
our Plc, EIS, VCT and secondary co-investment fund platforms.
"We earmarked 70% of our capital to be reserved for scaling-up
and increasing our stakes in existing portfolio companies through
later rounds and since the beginning of last month the team has
been busy putting our investors' capital to work in this way,
investing over GBP25 million in the last 8 weeks. We are on target
to reach our ambition to invest over GBP100m, across the Group,
this year into European technology companies."
"Draper Esprit provides long term capital to entrepreneurs, a
unique proposition for portfolio companies in a market dominated by
fixed term funds. Importantly, as funding and support for growth
businesses stalls in a post-Brexit climate, we feel that support
for European and British entrepreneurs is now even more vital. Our
patient capital model gives them access to the investment they
need, as well as providing sustained, long-term capital support to
build their companies into global leaders in timeframes that suit
them."
Notable investments made by the Group include GBP3.6 million
(GBP1.8 million plc) in an unannounced insure-tech business and the
following investments into existing portfolio companies:
Perkbox
Draper Esprit has significantly increased its equity stake in
Perkbox, investing a further GBP6.6 million from the plc. The Group
first invested in 2016 alongside the equity crowdfunding platform,
Seedrs, and, including the follow-on investment, has now invested
over GBP9.1 million.
Founded in 2015, Perkbox is the digital employee engagement
platform that launched in 2015. They have also developed a 'Perkbox
for customers', a white-label platform which helps businesses
acquire, connect with and retain loyal businesses. Forbes recently
ranked Perkbox as one of Britain's top 5 startups while they were
ranked no.3 in the start-ups 100 index of the most innovative and
fastest growing start-ups in the UK.
Trustpilot
Draper Esprit first invested in Trustpilot in 2013, with
subsequent follow on investments in 2015 and January 2017 and now a
further investment in July 2017. Including this latest investment,
the Company has now invested a total of GBP17 million into the
business.
Founded in 2007, Trustpilot is a global, multi-language review
community. Trustpilot has customers in 65 countries including
Denmark, Sweden, the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands
and the U.S. Trustpilot has offices in New York, London, Denver,
Copenhagen and Melbourne.
Trustpilot has built a strong SaaS revenue model with excellent
growth across Europe over the last 3 years. They are now
successfully expanding into the US and becoming the world's leader
in helping to measure Trust online.
Graphcore
Draper Esprit first backed Graphcore last year and has now
invested GBP4.9 million in total. Draper Esprit's latest investment
is part of a wider $30 million Series B funding round recently
announced.
Graphcore is a machine intelligence company that is changing the
way that developers can build AI and machine learning applications
through its cutting-edge processing capabilities. Its technology
will be indispensable for advancements in Artificial Intelligence
across industries. The Graphcore processors will be used in machine
intelligence applications from autonomous vehicles to personalized
healthcare, intelligent mobile devices and collaborative robots.
The appetite for an easier and more powerful way to develop such
applications is growing rapidly.
The new funding comes as the company prepares to ship its first
Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) hardware to customers later this
year, with scale-up production for enterprise data centres and
cloud environments in 2018.
Push Doctor
The Group has invested GBP7 million, of which the plc invested
GBP3.5 million in Push Doctor, Europe's largest digital health
provider. This was part of a $26.1 million Series B funding round
led by a powerful syndicate of global investors. This investment
follows on from the Company's original investment of GBP1.8 million
made by the Group last year.
Based in Manchester Push Doctor is the first truly digital
health consumer brand in the UK, connecting patients to a smart
network of thousands of UK qualified GPs, giving them access to a
doctor in as little as six minutes on any device. This round of
investment will enable Push Doctor to bring new products to market,
the first of which will hit later this year, further expanding the
company's value-proposition for patients as it couples its
market-changing instant access doctors with complementary products
and services.
-ends-
Enquiries
Draper Esprit plc
Simon Cook (Chief Executive
Officer)
Ben Wilkinson (Chief Financial +44 (0)20 7931
Officer) 8800
Numis Securities
Nominated Adviser & Joint Broker
Alex Ham / Richard Thomas
Jamie Loughborough / Harry +44 (0)20 7260
Trueman 1000
Goodbody Stockbrokers
ESM Adviser & Joint Broker
Corporate Finance: Don Harrington
/ Richard Tunney +353 1 667 0420
Corporate Broking: Linda Hickey +44 (0)203 841
/ Charlotte Craigie 6202
Belvedere Communications (PR) +44 (0)20 3567
John West / Kim van Beeck 0510
Notes to Editors
Draper Esprit (www.draperesprit.com) was founded in 2006, and is
one of the largest and most active VC firms in Europe, helping
entrepreneurs to build global ground-breaking technology companies
through hands-on board level support, internationalisation and
commercialisation activities and investment.
In 2016, with the support of new institutional investors and
existing shareholders, Draper Esprit transformed into a listed PLC
model (LSE: GROW.L, ESM GRW.I) to take a longer term, multi-stage,
patient capital approach. In recent years, Draper Esprit's exits
have generated more than $4.0 billion in combined enterprise
value.
Draper Esprit is the exclusive Western European member of the
Silicon Valley-based Draper Global Network, with offices around the
world and portfolio companies including Baidu, Skype, Space X,
Tesla and other world leading companies.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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