TIDMSURE
RNS Number : 4561Q
Sure Ventures PLC
21 October 2019
Sure Ventures plc ('Sure Ventures' or 'the Company')
Portfolio Update
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'), Artificial Intelligence ('AI')
and Fintech, is pleased to provide an update on its investment
portfolio.
SURE VALLEY VENTURES SUB FUND OF SUIR VALLEY VENTURES ICAV
Sure Ventures made an initial EUR4.5 million commitment to Sure
Valley Ventures Fund ('Sure Valley') representing an interest in
Sure Valley of approximately 22.17%. This commitment was made at a
price of EUR1.00 per share; the last recorded Sure Valley dealing
NAV as at the 30th of September 2019 was EUR0.954.
A subsequent commitment of a further EUR2.5 million by Sure
Ventures was announced on 2 September 2019, taking the overall
total commitment in Sure Valley to EUR7.0 million, representing a
25.9% share in Sure Valley. This additional commitment was also
made at price of EUR1.00 per share.
Sure Valley has several investments across the AR, VR, IoT and
AI in Fintech sectors:
VR Education Holdings Plc - http://immersivevreducation.com/
VRE is a ground-breaking developer of 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. Last interim results showed
progress with revenues up 60% and losses have fallen significantly.
The company has released five major products to date:
-- 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 AR and VR 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 of March 2019. This
represented a 4x unrealised uplift in Sure Valley's initial
investment. The team are busy building their AR game portfolio and
we are pleased with the progress to date.
Wia - www.wia.io
WIA https://www.wia.io/ is a ground-breaking IoT cloud platform
https://www.wia.io/product, 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 the
seamless integration of enterprise systems. WIA also just lunched
its own hardware product called the "Dot One"
https://www.wia.io/dot-one as an entry level device for first time
makers. It now has 65K developers using its platform.
ProVision - www.provisioncameramatics.com
ProVision is the leader in CameraMatics solutions for commercial
fleets, delivering products that allow fleet managers to reduce
fleet risk, increase driver safety and comply with growing
governance and compliance regulations. ProVision has merged four
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 and Sure
Valley expect the company to complete that round before the end of
Q4 2019. The company is growing revenues quickly both from new
customer wins and from a reoccurring revenue perspective.
NDRC Arc Labs - http://www.arclabs.ie/
The NDRC@ArcLabs investment was structured as a subscription 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 two 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, Sure Valley sees this Accelerator
being a source of proprietary deal flow.
Artomatix - https://artomatix.com/
Artomatix has patent pending AI software technology that cuts
the cost of content creation for animated movies, video games and
AR/VR applications by over 85% through AI automation. Given that
the typical cost of a CGI movie, such as Avatar, is $300 million, a
AAA video game such as Destiny is $330 million and a typical
animated movie is $175 million and can take 4-6 years to develop,
Artomatix has the potential to revolutionise these industries. Sure
Valley invested EUR750 thousand in preference shares at a pre-money
of EUR11 million and also purchased EUR150 thousand ordinary shares
at pre-money of approximately EUR3.5 million. These ordinary shares
have been converted to preference shares to bring our total
shareholding in the company to just over 10% fully diluted. The
company was also awarded a 3.2m euro grant from the Irish
government's disruptive Technology Fund and the Fast Track to
innovation fund (EU) in December, which is being put to good use.
The team has now secured some major studios as paying
customers.
Nova Leah
Nova Leah is the leader in cyber security for connected medical
devices and is an IoT investment by Sure Valley. 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. Suir Valley invested 750K euros in the company for 10.62%
of the business fully diluted. Subsequent to its investment which
closed on the 5(th) of October 2018, the company was successful in
the Irish government Disruptive Technology Fund (DTIF) programme
for 1.5m euros. The company is now winning customers in the US and
growing its commercial offering.
Admix Ltd
Admix has developed what is called a Supply-Side Platform (SSP),
which enables developers to monetise 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. Sure Valley invested $500
thousand at a pre-money of $5,000,000 for a shareholding of 7%
fully diluted in the business, with a right in the investment docs
to get to 10% at the next round should Sure Valley choose to.
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 glasses at all. VividQ disrupts
existing ways of creating 3D images, such stereo or
autostereo-display, to power the next generation of holographic VR
headsets, AR smart glasses, and automotive head-up displays. Sure
Valley invested GBP500K in preference shares at a pre-money
valuation of GBP6.5m for a total stake of 5.23% fully diluted.
VividQ has recently announced a commercial deal with HIMAX a $820m
dollar tech company.
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 has developed a toolkit to enable customers to build
fully customisable, web-enabled instruments to acquire and analyse
the data required quickly and cost-effectively. Each element can be
tailored to different needs whether a client wants to measure gas,
air or water quality or anything in between.
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 is making
significant progress with its partnership model, signing further
deals with companies such as Merlin Entertainment, The O2, Aspro
Parks, Al Hokair group and The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. It has
deployed close to 300 headsets and expects to be at breakeven point
by Q1 2020. The share price can be volatile, especially given
current stock market volatility, but the company is performing well
and making some real progress with headset deployment.
VividQ - In addition to the Sure Valley stake of GBP500K, Sure
Ventures has made a direct investment into VividQ of GBP500k at the
recommendation of the AIFM. The board identified the opportunity as
a suitable and complementary 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 an exciting
opportunity.
Sure Ventures Director, Gareth Burchell said, "We are pleased
with the performance of our portfolio and are now witnessing the
businesses commercialise their software. The commercialisation
stage of a software business can yield some significant, fast0paced
results and we are beginning to see the portfolio mature and expect
to be able to report some valuation milestones soon. The NAV of
Sure Ventures is very much linked to the share price performance of
Immotion Plc at present, but as we continue to see the AIFM deploy
capital, we will begin to see that dependency dilute the percentage
weighting of Immotion in the NAV calculation going forward. We
would like to congratulate the AIFM on finding and investing in a
very exciting group of technology businesses that have the
potential to create significant shareholder value."
ENDS
For further information, please visit www.sureventuresplc.com or
contact:
Gareth Burchell Sure Ventures plc +44 (0) 20 7186 9918
St Brides Partners (Financial
Isabel de Salis PR) +44 (0) 20 7236 1177
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. The Company
aims to provide investors with a diversified exposure to three
rapidly-growing markets: augmented reality/virtual reality, fintech
and Internet of Things. 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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