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British Patient Capital – Full Year Results for the period ending 31 March 2023

Press release 27 November 2023

Investing in tomorrow: British Patient Capital’s total fund and co-investment commitments reach £1.9bn.

Through our sustained investment activity – now totaling £1.9bn since inception – we have confirmed our position as the largest domestic investor in UK venture and venture growth capital.

In spite of a slowdown across the venture capital industry as markets adjusted to economic conditions, British Patient Capital continued to invest through all of its programmes.

In March 2023 the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the extension of British Patient Capital until 2033. This recognises our track record and the important role the business plays in providing the long-term investment that fast-growing companies need to scale up.

Catherine Lewis La Torre CEO, British Patient Capital

British Patient Capital invested £287m 1 in the year to March 2023, of which £210m was committed from its core funds and co-investment programme. The business now has 70 funds in its portfolio, managed by 40 different venture and venture growth firms. We made eight new fund commitments during the last financial year, while our portfolio funds made 182 new investments, which increased the size of our underlying portfolio to 1,190 companies.

Our Future Fund: Breakthrough direct investment programme had a very active year with £77m of investments into 10 companies across life sciences and deep tech, delivering on its objective of increasing the availability of finance for growth stage companies in R&D intensive industries.

Highlights

  • Across its three programmes, British Patient Capital manages assets with a total value of £3,075m 2
  • Investments since inception totalled £1,898m 3  across 70 fund commitments, six co-investments, and 16 Future Fund: Breakthrough deals.
  • Total commitments, including capital from other institutional investors, now total £13bn.
  • In 2022/23, we made eight new fund commitments and two co-investments from the core programme, and 10 direct investments via Future Fund: Breakthrough.
  • Announced the first investment through the Life Sciences Investment Programme.

Maintaining an attractive long-term rate of return for the UK taxpayer:

  • Despite an expected correction in valuations after a period of historic highs, performance since inception remains robust, with a total gain of £487.2m (realised and unrealised).
  • The total portfolio Internal Rate of Return (IRR) since inception for the core programme was 19% to end of March 2023.  4
  • The portfolio Total Value to Paid-in (TVPI) fo the core programme was 1.52x. 5

Notable commitments and investments during the year include:

Core funds programme

  • Connect IV, backing early-stage companies in B2B SaaS, fintech, consumer software and digital health.
  • Dawn V, investing in early-stage B2B software.
  • Kindred III, an early-stage investor, backing B2B business founders.
  • Northern Gritstone, an investment company focused on university spinouts and R&D-intensive businesses from the North of England.
  • Notion V, which invests in early-stage business software and fintech companies.

Life Sciences Investment Programme:

The £200m Lifesciences Investment Programme announced its first cornerstone investment: SV Health Investors’ Biotech Crossover Opportunities Fund, supporting companies that provide transformative therapies for patients across a range of clinical needs.

Future Fund: Breakthrough

In 2022/23 Future Fund: Breakthrough, a £375m programme which targets growth-stage R&D-intensive UK companies, made investments into 10 companies, including:

  • Iceotope, a Sheffield-based developer of immersion cooling solutions for data centres and other IT infrastructure.
  • Perspectum, a medical technology business providing advanced imaging solutions.
  • PragmatIC, a Cambridge-based designer and manufacturer of semiconductors.
  • Quantum Motion, a quantum computing start-up led by academics from UCL and Oxford University.
  • Tenpoint Therapeutics, a company developing breakthrough regenerative treatments for ocular diseases.
In the five years since inception, British Patient Capital has grown to become an integral part of the UK’s venture capital landscape. As the industry responds to a period of wider economic uncertainty, the need for a patient capital investor that takes a long-term view across market cycles is more important than ever. We are committed to ensuring funding continues to be available for innovative companies that will be the success stories of tomorrow. Russ Cummings Chair, British Patient Capital

Please click here to read our Annual Report and Accounts 2023.

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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