British Smaller Companies VCTs launch £90m fundraise

investmentweek.co.uk:

This will comprise of a £65m fundraise and an overallotment option of up to £25m.

This will comprise of a £65m fundraise and an over-allotment option of up to £25m.

Managed by YFM, the two VCTs tend to investment between £2m and £6m at a time in companies with at least £1m of revenue. They tend to prefer established businesses looking for their next phase of growth over start-ups.

The two trusts have combined net assets of more than £334.5m and a portfolio of 41 companies, focusing on technology and with a bias towards businesses focused on data, application software, tech-enabled services and new media.

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In the five years to 30 June 2023, the BSC and BSC2 trusts generated a NAV total return of 68% and 61.3%, respectively.

Nicholas Hyett, investment manager at Wealth Club, said: «Historically the manager, YFM, has done a good job of backing businesses that are capable of making the jump from start-up to potential world beater. In the current portfolio, Outpost VFX and Matillion stand out.

»Visual effects business Outpost VFX has worked on everything from Star Trek to the Rings of Power, while data analytics platform Matillion is one of Europe's fastest growing private technology businesses and boasts customers including Cisco, Amazon and Accenture — discerning customers who know the value of data."

Those successes have left the portfolio «a little top heavy», Hyett noted, with Matillion alone accounting for between 12% and 16% of net assets, but he noted that another year of successful fundraising «should help the VCT further diversify its portfolio».

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