TIDMSURE
RNS Number : 3636M
Sure Ventures PLC
11 May 2020
Sure Ventures plc ('Sure Ventures' or 'the Company')
Portfolio Update Q1 2020 period
Sure Ventures plc, a London listed venture capital fund which
invests in early stage software companies in the rapidly growing
technology areas of augmented reality ('AR'), virtual reality
('VR'), Internet of Things ('IoT') and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
in Fintech. We are pleased to provide an update on the Company's
investment portfolio.
SURE VALLEY VENTURES FUND
Sure Ventures made a EUR 7million commitment to Sure Valley
Ventures Fund ('Sure Valley') representing an interest in Sure
Valley of approximately 25.9% (assuming no other funding
commitments are made). This commitment was made at a price of
EUR1.00 per share.
Sure Valley has several investments across the fintech, AR, VR
and IoT sectors:
-- VR Education Holdings - http://immersivevreducation.com/
VRE is a ground-breaking developer of Virtual Reality ('VR')
software and immersive experiences with a specific focus on
education and enterprise learning and development. VRE's core
platform is the Engage VR platform that enables educators to
develop VR education experiences and enterprises to develop
corporate learning and development VR simulations for workplace
training.
The company has released five major products to date and has
recently signed a commercial agreement with Deutsche Telecom for
the launch of a 5G VR device. The current COVID-19 outbreak really
has highlighted the use/power of virtual reality for teaching,
seminars, business meetings and conferences. This is reflected in
the market reaction to VR Education since mid-March.
-- Apollo 11 VR: immersivevreducation.com/apollo-11-vr
-- Titanic VR: immersivevreducation.com/titanic-vr
-- Berlin Blitz: immersivevreducation.com/1943-berlin-blitz
-- Engage VR: immersivevreducation.com/engage-platform
-- Raid on the Ruhr:
https://immersivevreducation.com/raid-on-the-ruhr/
-- WarDucks - www.warducks.com
Founded by former Facebook employee, Nikki Lannen, WarDucks
mission is to build incredible, high quality, fun augmented and
virtual reality games. The company has six bestselling titles under
its belt, the latest two of which were Top Ten on PlayStation VR.
To enable the company to take this product to the market it
completed a series A round of EUR3.284 million in Q1, with new
investors EQT investing EUR2.58 million, Sure Valley following on
to maintain it percentage with EUR453,858.32 and existing investors
making up the remaining investment. The transaction completed on
the 29(th) of March 2019. This represented a 4x unrealised uplift
in our initial investment.
Nikki and her team received high public praise from Tim Cook
(Apple CEO) on the AR game being built and was quoted as saying "
WarDucks set out to create a game with fun, engaging and colourful
characters and they nailed it".
-- Wia - www.wia.io
WIA is a ground-breaking Internet of Things (IoT) cloud platform
enabling developers to turn any type of sensor device into a
secure, smart and useful application in a matter of minutes. WIA is
the easiest and fastest way to link sensors and devices to develop
IoT applications. WIA's end-to-end platform provides full device
and application management, security, data capture and storage,
analysis, control, as well as launched the seamless integration of
enterprise systems. WIA also just launched its own hardware product
called the "Dot One" https://www.wia.io/dot-one as an entry level
device for first time makers
-- Cameramatics - www.cameramatics.com
Cameramatics is the leader in CameraMatics solutions for
commercial fleets, they deliver products that allow fleet managers
to reduce fleet risk, increase driver safety and comply with
growing governance and compliance regulations. Cameramatics has
merged 4 key technologies: video input systems (cameras and
scanners), smart processing systems, communications systems and
unique algorithmic IP to deliver intelligent driver and fleet
safety systems. To support further growth and USA market entry the
company has started meeting investors to lead its series A round
which we had expected that to close in Q1, but is now anticipated
to close in Q2.
-- NDRC Arc Labs - http://www.arclabs.ie/
The NDRC@ArcLabs investment was structured as a subscription and
as a limited Partner to the Accelerator. The purpose of the
Accelerator is source and develop 30 start-ups over two years that
Sure Valley has the right to invest in. The Accelerator is running
three calls for 10 start-ups over 2 years in areas that are related
to the fund's investment strategy of AR/VR, IoT and AI. As a result
of the Accelerator's programme significantly overlapping with the
Fund's investment areas we see this Accelerator being a source of
proprietary deal flow.
-- Nova Leah
Nova Leah is the leader in cyber security for connected medical
devices and is an IoT investment by Sure Valley Ventures. Nova Leah
sells directly to the top medical device manufactures typically in
Boston, MA and the west coast of the USA. The company's first
product SelectEvidence helps medical device manufacturers identify
and address cyber-security issues throughout the manufacturing and
release process of their connected medical devices. Sure Valley
Ventures invested 750K euros in the company for 10.62% of the
business fully diluted. Anita Finnegan (CEO) is happy with progress
and Nova Leah is now working with 6 of the world largest medical
device manufacturers.
-- Admix Ltd
Admix has developed what is called a Supply-Side Platform (SSP)
which enables developers to monetize their content by creating,
managing and sell advertising inventory. Being an SSP, Admix is a
broker that sells developers (think WarDucks) inventory
programmatically at scale. Being programmatic automatizes the
buying/selling process. Admix enables, for the first time, VR/AR
inventory to become immediately available to thousands of
advertisers connected to the existing ecosystem, which provides
VR/AR developers with instant revenue. The company completed a
Series A funding round to scale their platform announced on April
the 15th at a 4.5x uplift from the seed round where Sure Valley
Ventures originally invested. We followed on with a further GBP443K
pounds in the institutional led investment round.
-- VividQ Ltd
VividQ is a deep tech software company with world-leading
expertise in 3D holography: the next generation display technology.
Holography has long been considered the ultimate display
technology. The science fiction ideal of engineering and
manipulating light to produce 3D projections appealed to the
imagination of millions through franchises such as Star Wars or
Star Trek. Holography overcomes these issues, and paves the way for
immersive 3D without the need for glasses at all. VividQ disrupts
existing ways of creating 3D images, such as stereo or
autostereo-display, to power the next generation of holographic VR
headsets, AR smart glasses, and automotive head-up displays. Sure
Valley Ventures invested GBP500K in preference shares at a
pre-money valuation of GBP6.5m for a total stake of 5.23% fully
diluted. Sure Ventures have invested alongside Fluxunit and UTEC
and adoption of the technology is accelerating, announcing
partnerships with Himax and Compound Photonics, with a strong
pipeline developing with some of the world's leading and well-known
brands.
-- Ambisence
Ambisense's Ambilytics(TM) platform optimises the delivery of
environmental risk assessment on some of the world's largest
infrastructure projects across industrial, Oil & Gas and Waste
Management verticals, partnering with global multinationals such as
CEMEX, SGS & Arcadis. Ambilytics(TM) encompasses both IoT and
AI solutions, combining information from remotely deployed field
devices with contextual data sources such as weather, satellite,
geophysical and operational data to build machine learning
models.
Ambisense were awarded a contract supporting Highways England in
the planned Lower Thames Crossing project. The project is the
largest single biggest road infrastructure project since the M25
was completed more than 30 years ago.
-- GetVisibility
GetVisibility was established on the 31(st) August 2017 by Ronan
Murphy and Mark Brosnan. The Co-founder and CEO, Ronan Murphy
worked as a C-level executive in the Cybersecurity industry since
2005. He is widely regarded as an expert in the field. Ronan has
acted as a strategic advisor to many publicly traded organisations
on improving their cybersecurity posture and worked with IBM on the
first IBM's Watson for Cybersecurity deployment globally.
The company has developed and launched a software platform
called GetVisibility targeting this data security sector. This
software delivers visibility over unstructured data, e.g. Word
documents or pdfs, for enterprises, by automatically, accurately
and precisely scanning and classifying the data to a corporate
taxonomy using artificial intelligence (AI) at scale (NLP and
Neural Networks).
DIRECT INVESTMENTS
Investments made directly by Sure Ventures plc:
Immotion PLC ('Immotion'), is a UK based company that creates
its own high-quality VR content and enhances the immersive
experience by coupling this content with motion simulation. Sure
Ventures made a GBP500,000 investment in February 2018. Immotion's
Q1 trading update released on the 15(th) of January to showed a
strong pace of headset deployment, with 93 headsets to be installed
by the end of Q1. They have installed their out of home headsets in
the London Sea life centre on the South Bank and numerous aquariums
and entertainment sites. The company had forecast EBITDA breakeven
at or around the end of Q1 and its pipeline was strong. The
Covid-19 outbreak has of course hit their model hard as stated in
its trading update released on the 11(th) of March 2020. The
management team are taking steps to cut costs and ensure working
capital requirements are met.
VividQ- In addition to the Sure Valley Ventures stake of
GBP500K, Sure Ventures has also made a direct investment into
VividQ of GBP500k at the recommendation of the AIFM. The board
identified the opportunity as a suitable and complimentary
investment for Sure Ventures and agreed that this was an exciting
deep technology company that could have developed a solution that
changes the way that people view content in 3D. Holography could be
the next generation of display technology and the types of
companies that are early stage adopters of VividQ's software offers
shareholders and exciting opportunity. We remain excited about the
progress being made here and anticipate that 2020 could be a
transformational year for the company.
Sure Ventures Director, Gareth Burchell said, "We remain pleased
and positive about the progress made by the AIFM this quarter. The
market volatility and outbreak of COVID-19 has impacted businesses
all over the globe both big and small. Immotion PLC is a business
model that has been significantly affected by trading conditions,
but the price improvement in VR Education and the uplift achieved
by the closing of the Admix Series A has largely offset this fall.
We also welcome GetVisibility to the portfolio, which is an
exciting and deep technology play in the cybersecurity space. We
are pleased that the portfolio as a whole has been resilient to the
unprecedented circumstances we find ourselves in and this gives us
confidence in the future performance of this diversified
portfolio"
ENDS
For further information, please visit www.sureventuresplc.com or
contact:
Gareth Burchell Sure Ventures plc +44 (0) 20 7186 9918
Notes to Editors
Sure Ventures plc listed on the London Stock Exchange in January
2018 giving retail investors access to an asset class that is
usually dominated by private venture capital funds. Sure Ventures
is focusing on companies in the UK, Republic of Ireland and other
European countries, making seed and series A investments in
companies with first rate management teams, products which benefit
from market validation with target revenue run rates of at least
GBP400,000 over the next 12 months. Website:
https://www.sureventuresplc.com/
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END
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