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British Patient Capital Annual Report 2022

Press release 28 November 2022

Investing in Innovation: British Patient Capital’s total commitments and co-investments reach more than £1.6bn.

Judith Hartley, CEO, British Patient Capital (until 30 September 2022), said:

“British Patient Capital is the largest domestic investor in UK venture and venture growth opportunities. As our latest Annual Report and Accounts show, we are helping to ensure high-growth UK companies have access to venture capital funding at the right time in their life-cycle, supporting them to expand, create jobs, develop products and enter new markets.

During the course of 2021/22 we invested £341m 1  across all our programmes, of which £228m was from our core funds and co-investment programme. This brings our total investments since inception in 2018 to more than £1.6bn, with the core programme comprising £1.3bn via 61 fund commitments and co-investments into four companies. There are now 1,008 companies in our underlying fund portfolio, an increase of 332 on the previous year’s figure.

In what was a very active year, 2021/22 also saw us successfully launch two new initiatives: Future Fund: Breakthrough, a £375m programme that invests directly in growth rounds for R&D-intensive companies; and the £200m Life Sciences Investment Programme, which invests in specialist venture growth funds, to increase the availability of later-stage finance for high-potential UK life sciences companies.”

There is substantial dry powder within the British Patient Capital programme which will be available to support scale-up companies over the coming years. We continue to believe strongly in the potential for value creation in our portfolio over its lifetime, and more broadly in the ability of the venture capital ecosystem as a driver of sustainable growth for the UK. Catherine Lewis La Torre CEO, British Patient Capital

Highlights

  • Across its three programmes, British Patient Capital now manages assets with a total value of £3,075m 2 .
  • Investments since inception totalled £1,635m 3  across 61 fund commitments, four co-investments and five Future Fund: Breakthrough deals.
  • Total commitments, including capital from other institutional investors, now total more than £10.7bn
  • In 2021/22, we made 10 new fund commitments and two co-investments from the core programme.

Achieving an attractive rate of return for the UK taxpayer:

  • The total portfolio Internal Rate of Return since inception for the core programme was 32.9% to end of March 2022, compared to 25.3% in March 2021 4 .
  • The portfolio TVPI of the core programme was 1.80x, up from 1.51x the previous year. 5

Notable commitments and investments during the year include:

  • Balderton Capital VIII, backing leading-edge technologies from seed to growth stage.
  • Cambridge Innovation Capital II, which will invest in R&D-intensive businesses across deep-tech and life sciences.
  • Quantexa, a global data and analytics software company, via a co-investment in the company’s Series D round.
  • accuRx, a developer of healthcare software used by 98% of GP practices in the UK, via a co-investment in its Series B round.
  • Four companies from the British Patient Capital portfolio achieved unicorn status over the reporting period – Thought Machine, GoCardless, Lendable and Wayve.

Establishing Future Fund: Breakthrough:

Future Fund: Breakthrough, our £375m programme targeting growth-stage R&D-intensive UK companies, launched in July 2021 and during the nine months from inception to end of March 2022, we made investments into five companies.

In life sciences, these investments were in Epsilogen, a specialist in novel therapeutic antibodies to treat cancer; Microbiotica, whose technology uses the body’s resident bacteria to develop medicines for a range of diseases; and Quell Therapeutics, a developer of engineered T-regulatory cell therapies for serious medical conditions driven by over-activity of the immune system. We also invested in two deep technology companies: Paragraf, a graphene specialist; and Ultraleap, whose hand tracking technologies allow users to engage with the digital world without the need for touchscreens, controllers or keypads.

British Patient Capital has continued its mission to deliver funding for innovative, high-growth companies, cementing its position as the largest domestic investor into UK venture capital funds. While the industry will not be immune to the increasing macro-economic uncertainty, the fundamental potential of the UK innovation economy remains strong. Importantly, as a patient capital investor that invests independently of market cycles, we take a long-term view. As such, we remain focused on funding the innovative companies of today, so they can become the success stories of tomorrow. Russ Cummings Chair, British Patient Capital

Our Annual Report and Accounts 2022, can be found on our annual report and accounts page.

Further Information

Notes to editors

About British Patient Capital

British Patient Capital Limited is a wholly owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, the UK government’s economic development bank. Its mission is to enable long-term investment in innovative firms led by ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build large-scale businesses. Launched in June 2018, British Patient Capital has £2.5bn to invest over 10 years in venture and venture growth capital to support high growth potential innovative UK businesses in accessing the long-term financing they require to scale up. Find out more about British Patient Capital.

British Business Bank plc and its subsidiary entities are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. They are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc website.

British Patient Capital makes commitments and invests on its own behalf and on behalf of third-party investors whose investments British Patient Capital manages.

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