Advisers, paraplanners and investment managers are invited to join the Mercia Webinar taking place on Tuesday, Dec 15 at 02:00 PM. It’s a great opportunity to get down to detailed due diligence and see for yourself the progress being made within the business and what’s driving their business and investment success.
Click here to register for the webinar
What can you expect?
During the webinar, there will be a round-up of 2020 from Mercia’s commercial perspective and inputs from various portfolio companies.
This event will be hosted by Paul Mattick, who heads the Sales and Investor Relations team for the Mercia EIS Funds. It will also include presentations from other members of the Mercia team including Mark Payton (CEO) on the Mercia Asset Management interim results, Peter Dines (COO) on the EIS and VCT strategies, and a look ahead to 2021 by the Saturday Economist John Ashcroft.
In addition, there will be multiple fund managers discussing the year that was with portfolio companies.
Business highlights
In terms of Mercia’s business performance, there were many highlights, as the team will discuss. There was strong growth in adjusted operating profit and fair value movements (“FVM”). Assets under management have increased by c.78% to £872m and revenue up c.51% to £8.4m and adjusted operating profit of £1.1m. In terms of investments, again there will be plenty of insight into the rationale and progress of their top holdings as well as the more recent additions to the portfolios. There will also be a look at exits and with Clear Review recently sold for £1m in cash, double Mercia’s direct investment, there’s plenty to get excited about.
Mark Payton, Chief Executive Officer of Mercia, commented:
“These record results mark the halfway point in our three-year strategic plan to achieve adjusted operating profitability, expand the Group’s assets under management (“AuM”) to at least £1.0billion and to ‘evergreen’ Mercia’s balance sheet. I am pleased to say that strong progress has been made during the six month period under review.
We have successfully built scale in our third-party fund management business and the fees this is generating are enabling us to deliver a sustainable adjusted operating profit, in turn underpinning our maiden interim dividend and the adoption of a progressive dividend policy.
Our total AuM have now increased to c.£872million, c.£722million of which is third-party funds under management, and we remain confident in achieving our target of £1.0billion in total AuM within the next 18 months.
I am also pleased with the positive steps we are making towards ‘evergreening’ our balance sheet. We delivered a profitable cash realisation during the period and another post period end. Furthermore, our direct investment portfolio is well financed and we have considerable remaining liquidity. In addition, it is encouraging that we have reported a strong net fair value increase, reversing some of the COVID-19 impact we reported in our full year 2020 results. We are increasingly optimistic about the potential of the companies within our direct investment portfolio, many of which are in sectors such as Life Sciences, Software and Digital Entertainment which are experiencing strong tailwinds.
Whilst this continuing period of uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected many UK businesses, the resilience of Mercia’s hybrid investment model, which connects third-party managed funds and direct investment activity via our proprietary capital, positions us favourably as we move into the next half year and thereafter.”
Mercia’s key statistics and strategic highlights include:
-Resilient, scalable business model
-No use of Government support schemes
-Strong progress against three-year objectives
-Robust recurring fee model at a blended c.2%
-ESG principles, core to investment philosophy
-Maiden dividend, 0.1p per share
Proprietary capital
-16.2% increase in portfolio valuation
-Two full cash exits in H1 2021, one more post period end
– Resilient portfolio, no further COVID-19 related impact
Third-party FuM highlights
-£722m in FuM (+100%)
-Strong liquidity, c.£255m
-Strong progress with – 81 new investments despite remote working
Click here to register for the webinar
