Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen, and welcome to the IP Group PLC Half-year Results I nvestor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that's just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and will publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, as usual, we would just like to submit the following poll, and if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful.
I would now like to hand you over to the Executive Management Team from IP Group PLC. Greg, good morning, sir.
Good morning and thanks. It's Jake and, as always, thanks to everyone at Investor Meet Company for, again, hosting our half-year results webinar. I was reflecting a bit, I was reading my FT on Saturday, and I almost choked on my yogurt, I guess, these days. I've sort of had to move on from cornflakes for longevity reasons. But I saw the headline, "The US market for IPOs has exploded back to life," with the busiest week for four years. And that's not something I've seen for a few years, I guess, you know, maybe obviously, based on the title. But it was an interesting reflection that the public markets have had quite a positive impact on the portfolio in more than ways than one so far in 2025, and hopefully there is more opportunity that arises for us in future as a result.
I'm Greg Smith, and as CEO, I have the honor of leading IP Group and our excellent team on our mission to accelerate the power of science for a better future. And with me on today's call, we have our managing partner, Mark Reilly, and our CFO, David Baines, both in the room, really, and virtually. As usual, this presentation will be uploaded onto the IR section of our website with a few appendices. Before we start, please note all the usual disclaimers, and you can read that in the time I'm gonna spend on the slides, and good luck. But this covers all the information, and particularly any forward-looking statements that we may make, during the course of the next hour or so.
So in terms of what we're going to cover, I'll provide an overview of the group's performance in the first half, then I'll pass on to Mark, and he'll give an update on a number of our key balance sheet holdings. And then, another notable development, actually, and then Dave's gonna run us through a summary of the numbers, and then we'll head into Q&A. As Jake said, as always, please post your questions up in the Q&A section, and, as always, we'll endeavor to cover them all either live in the session or, afterwards via the platform if we run out of time. So for the half-year, I think the main message is, overall, we made strong progress in the first half. We saw a number of encouraging developments in the portfolio, and indeed, the pipeline of significant milestones remains good through to the end of 2027.
The public markets were more of a contributor in terms of fair value, and then there were a number of other positive developments in the private portfolio. That public side included the successful IPO of Hinge Health in May and strong half-year results from Oxford Nanopore, who beat city expectations. We recorded total cash proceeds of GBP 30 million. That's nine times what we saw in the first half of 2024, and as a reminder, I said at the full year that we were targeting GBP 250 million of exits by the end of 2027, so what we've seen year to date means that we remain confident in achieving that target. We had a small overall loss for the first six months. However, NAV per share essentially stabilized in the reporting period and has subsequently increased since the period end to about GBP 1 a share.
We continue to be in a strong balance sheet position, and have good liquidity, and we've still got gross cash of GBP 237 million. And obviously, that's significantly up from this time last year, when we had the Featurespace exit and others during the period. And then a final note is we're seeing increasing momentum in our efforts to add to our private scale-up capital under management. And the market hasn't necessarily moved as quickly as we'd hoped or expected on this front; however, we have good confidence of securing at least one new mandate by the time that I talk to you at the time of our full-year results. So on the portfolio, coming into the year, four out of our top five holdings have seen encouraging developments in the year to date.
As Mark and DB will cover briefly later, the fifth, Oxa, while it's making encouraging underlying progress, is yet to close its latest funding round, and so our revised valuation has been paid back to reflect that position. On Hinge, we were delighted for Dan and Gabe and the team to have the opportunity to ring the New York Stock Exchange opening bell on May 22nd. PitchBook described their successful IPO as a pivotal moment for digital health, signaling the reopening of the health tech public markets after a three-year drought. Mark will cover more on this shortly. But in summary, the company has traded very well since IPO and is up about 80% off the back of strong Q2 numbers. Oxford Nanopore, they delivered a strong first half of trading. They beat analysts' expectations on both revenue and on a lower EBIT loss.
I think our observation was that growth was strong across all sectors and geographies. So by customer category, they grew in academic and in all of the three sort of applied sectors. And then by regions, even despite the sort of some of the headwinds in America, Americas was up, APAC was up, EMEA was up. So we're, you know, confident in the outlook for that company. By way of context, we are now the second largest holder behind EIT, the Ellison Institute of Technology, which is backed by Larry Ellison, as many of you will know. Of course, Larry recently became briefly the world's richest man, and he obviously has quite an incredible track record of delivering value through Oracle.
I thought it was, you know, quite interesting that the UK press has started to pick up more recently on EIT and its Oxford ambitions. Nanopore is very relevant. If you go onto the website, you can see how relevant it is to their focus on two of their big themes, one around health, medical science, and generative biology, and the other around food security and sustainable agriculture. In terms of our position, as a reminder, we invested about GBP 80 million into the company over time. We've realized about GBP 110 million to date, so we've already covered our cost in full. As you'll have seen in our portfolio data for this year and last year, we've taken a small amount of liquidity on a couple of occasions.
As you'd expect, we continue to very actively monitor the company against where we consider fair value to be at any given time. As I said, we remain really confident in the medium-term outlook for the business, and we, our feeling was that their full-year 2025 guidance was, you know, maybe a bit conservative given the strong first half update. We're confident in our holding. We look forward to further commercial updates from the company. There's clearly a number of interesting commercial relationships brewing there in biopharma and in clinical, and also the deeper dive on their refined commercial strategy, which will be coming out in Q4, particularly around how they intend to exploit the sort of 13-14 billion of TAM that they've identified in what they call the higher priority segments.
And then on Crescendo , following the news that their most recent trial didn't meet its primary endpoint back in February, the management team has worked hard to progress that program through to value. And the company's published a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, JPET to its friends, and that was outlining the impact of its compounds on various chronic diseases where tissue damage occurs. So rheumatoid arthritis, as you'll know, but also things like osteoporosis, fibrosis, and interestingly, sarcopenia or muscle loss. And that last bit, I think, led to the paper being picked up by some of the longevity publications because muscle loss is particularly relevant at the moment around the weight loss drugs, the very common side effects of some of the good ones. And during the period, the company also added a very experienced non-exec, Dr. Mike Owen.
Mike Owen. We're delighted to have Dr. Owen join the board. He—you, you might recognize the name—he was a co-founder of Kymab, which sold to Sanofi back in 2021 for, I think it was a $1.1 billion upfront. And when he joined, he, he said, you know, Crescendo's bold approach to reversing tissue damage could fundamentally change the treatment paradigm for chronic diseases and therefore hold enormous clinical and commercial potential. As I mentioned a few months ago at the full-year results, the company's got funding to carry out a further trial, and the location and design of which is well underway, and we, we anticipate that will commence before the end of the year. On exits, we had a, you know, good period for cash realizations.
We set an internal target of GBP 50 million for full-year 2025 coming into the year, and the momentum into half two and some more elevated level of inbound interest in the portfolio gives us a high degree of confidence that we'll achieve that and likely exceed it. Of the examples shown here, two companies were outright company acquisitions, and one Centessa was a partial realization. For our remaining holding in Centessa, the company recently gave a positive update at the Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare Conference, and we anticipate the readout of their phase two in narcolepsy is pretty imminent, and that will be the next catalyst for our remaining holding. In addition to these examples, also worth mentioning, we realized a small amount of our Hinge holding at the time of the IPO, and as I mentioned, the balance has gone up by around 80%.
So our lockup expires on that in November. On what we've done with that cash, as a reminder, our policy is a commitment to deliver cash returns to supplement capital growth using a proportion of the exits that we make in any given year. At the moment, we are using buybacks, and we said that we'll do that until the discount gets to a lower level than 20%. And given that persistent discount at the time of our full-year results back in March, we announced the intention to use a greater proportion of our realizations in 2025, and we will again review that towards the end of this year based on our capital forecast for going into 2026. The current program is GBP 75 million, and that includes GBP 20 million that we announced in June.
At today's date, as of yesterday, we've got about GBP 9 million left to run on that program, and so as we make further realizations, we'll look to add to that total. I think it's worth noting the acceleration this year has been quite significant. In fact, yesterday, I was looking at the numbers. Our share count fell below 900 million shares for the first time, which means that we've now retired 15% of our capital in issue. We've focused lots of our capital in the last couple of years on the buyback and on existing portfolio and getting those with the highest value potential through to their milestones of value realization, and we're starting to see, as sort of performance and market appetite continues to return, we'll start to selectively add a few more new holdings to the balance sheet portfolio, including from Parkwalk and the wider ecosystem.
So before I hand over to Mark, I just want to sort of briefly look forward quickly. A reminder of the IP Group investment case: three things to believe. The first is that there is significant value potential in UK science and technology. I've talked about this and exemplified this at our capital markets day, back in June. The second is that IP Group is well positioned to exploit this, given the team, the track record, the sourcing, and the portfolio, and that this represents an attractive shareholder opportunity, particularly given the discount at which we currently trade. To reiterate again, this is something that I've covered in the past few updates. This in a single slide, I guess, depicts the capital strategy that we are following to be able to exploit that opportunity.
From the perspective of a developing science and technology business, we're one of the few investors that can support development from the very earliest stages to relative maturity at the sort of venture growth end of the journey. Complementary private funds are strategically important in terms of pipeline, particularly in the case of Parkwalk, but also development capital for our businesses, and they also contribute fees to mitigate our net overheads. In terms of scale and ambition, Parkwalk, we're aiming to maintain around GBP 500 million of assets there. Successful exits are balancing off against new subscriptions. On the balance sheet, we're focused on NAV per share delivery, and that obviously includes about GBP 140 million of cash that we've returned to shareholders over the last couple of years. You know, it's appropriate for where we are in the cycle.
Then on the scale-up fund side, under which you'll remember Hostplus increased their commitment by a further AUD 125 million last year. That's where there is a real growth opportunity to scale available capital to ensure strong returns from our balance sheet and our sources of for our various investors. On the first bit of that, just a quick update on our differentiated U.K. sourcing platform, Parkwalk. The business here is that you'll see from the numbers, as I mentioned, has about GBP 500 million of assets under management there, which are all EIS tax-advantaged capital. We partner with many of the U.K.'s leading universities to source new spin-out opportunities. I'll just pull a couple of highlights out from the first half.
So, one, in addition to the alumni funds that we had with Oxford and Cambridge and agreed in Bristol, we were very pleased to add a new fund in collaboration with Northern Gritstone, which covers Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield. And then, similar to the theme that we're seeing on the balance sheet side, last week we were delighted to announce the acquisition of one of our portfolio companies in the funds, Cytora, which gave a good return to our EIS investors. And for our PLC shareholders, that generates additional fund management fees that contribute to lowering our net overheads. And then at the other end of that sort of capital strategy is our objective to add further scale-up capital. I mean, the context here continues to move in our favor.
Our overall observation is that the public and private sectors are, you know, starting to align in terms of their policy and their approach. And during the first half, there have been quite a lot of important points of progress, and there's things like updated mandates and increased funding for the British Business Bank and the National Wealth Fund, which are, and you can see there on the left-hand side, and then a lot of that is highly aligned with the industrial strategy in the U.K., and the sectors that we focus on are in turn aligned with those. The pensions bill is currently passing through the Commons, but how long that's quite going to take, but that removes some of the widely cited barriers to pension funds and similar long-term capital investing more in private productive assets in the U.K.
The Mansion House Compact, which is about 17 of the largest workplace pension providers in the U.K., committed to a voluntary commitment to have 10% of their default schemes in private markets by 2030, including half of that capital going into the U.K. There's been quite a lot of sort of sector activity. I mean, our experience, and probably that of the wider market when you look at mandates, is that there haven't been very many VC commitments, perhaps with the notable exception of the Phoenix Schroders joint venture, Future Growth Capital. But there's not been much that's really at scale, and our view is ultimately that's what's needed and where the big opportunity lies.
I would say encouragingly that the number and the stage of conversations with potential funders has seen quite an increase since the time of the Mansion House Accord, and we've added some additional experienced resource to our team to help exploit that. As I said at the start, we've got a good degree of confidence in securing at least one new mandate by the time I next talk to you for the full-year results. Quickly before I hand over to Mark, I thought I'd just cover a few of the companies or trail a few of the companies that we are excited about, and particularly those that have either presented or are going to present at our event this year. OxCCU, our sustainable aviation fuel business, and Mark's going to talk about that one shortly.
Andrew, the co-founder and CEO, will be at our flagship scale-up event in October. Intrinsic, you might remember that, the co-founder and CTO, Adnan, presented at our capital markets event. There's a video on our YouTube channel if you like a lot of technical detail. That's, that's quite a technical one. They are producing the world's smallest non-volatile memory, and they have what's called a tape-out coming towards the back end of this year. That does have very significant commercial potential given the company's initially targeting a segment of the memory market that's worth more than 50 billion. And then Genomics, at the capital markets day back in June again, Dave Thornton, who is the president there, gave a very compelling overview of the technology and its commercial applications.
He also stayed right till the end to update everyone that revenues will grow by more than 100% this year and will do so again in 2026, taking them to $70-$80 million. He said they'll be EBITDA positive by the end of this year. So that's another of our top 20 companies to watch. And then on the therapeutics, our current clinical stage portfolio is worth about 23p per share, and there's a good number of clinical milestones coming up between now and the end of 2027. Again, Mark's going to cover a couple of those shortly. And then just one other quick thing to mention, just briefly on our licensing portfolio. We don't speak much about this. We have a licensing portfolio of IP, predominantly from Imperial, and that contributes a few hundred thousand to our net overheads.
There are three main projects in that portfolio, but I mentioned at the start that the public markets have contributed in more ways than one this period. And back in January, Metsera therapeutics business IPO'd in the U.S., and actually we licensed the core IP to Metsera. Now, of course, it's early days, but if successful, there could be quite a meaningful source of royalty income over time. So we'll keep you updated on that one. So with that, I will hand over to Mark to talk a bit more about the portfolio.
Thank you, Greg. Good morning, everybody. So there's been notable events over the course of the first half. Perhaps arguably, the standout one, certainly for me personally, having sort of witnessed the whole journey of Hinge Health.
I recall, I think it's 2012, 2013, when its founder, Dan Perez, who remains the chief executive of Hinge Health, walked into our office and very confidently said, "I'm going to make you guys a lot of money." I think he can play with some confidence that that was accurate. Now, with a 50x overall return on our investment so far on that asset. So the company, of course, we were the first investor. When Dan was still a PhD student at the University of Oxford, it went on to raise substantial sums from some of the top Silicon Valley investors, underwent very impressive growth and had that successful IPO in May of this year. We were able to sell a small amount of the IPO, and we did sell a large amount of our holding price.
That is a very good valuation in the private markets two or three years ago. But we still have a remaining holding that was worth just under 40 million at the half year. The share price continues to trend upwards even since then, which is good news. That holding is locked in now until the end of November. But we can still have that holding in Hinge Health. The company has since put out some announcements of its latest results. It is a Q2 announcement. It again exceeded expectations and did very well. Revenue reported as increasing at 55% year-over-year. They are now at $140 million of revenue in that period. They are projecting 40% year-on-year growth going forward. There is still very strong commercial progress there. I saw there was a question in the Q&A.
The first question that came in in the Q&A was why sell Hinge Health, when there are lots of other smaller holdings in the portfolio that are, they were described as non-listed and non-relevant in the question. I would first of all highlight that Hinge Health was one of those non-relevant, non-listed holdings until relatively recently. We think there is value in holding stuff that has potential that could hit that inflection curve. I think also the reason why you as investors have us holding shares on your behalf, that there are some rationales for doing that, which is that we have sort of this technical expertise internally that we can kind of arbitrate our technical risk. We can judge that better than others. We have influence on these companies.
We have extra visibility of a lot of these companies that others don't. And when those things become less true, as the companies mature, less of a kind of rationale for us to hold them. And so where that liquidity exists, that's where we start to consider the divesting those positions. So just running through some of the other top assets by value in the portfolio, just to update you on what's been happening at some of those assets. Greg spoke quite a bit about Nanopore, so I won't spend too long on that one other than to reiterate the fact that it continues to outperform its peers. They had a positive set of results that beat the market expectations, 28% rising revenue, up to GBP 105 million now.
Key thing that we were looking for in those results was a diversification of revenue, demonstration that they're moving into applied markets, into clinical markets, as well as this strong basic research revenue that they've already demonstrated over the past several years. We really saw that at this time, the revenue grew by over 50% in the clinical domain and 27% in the applied domain. That's really showing that they're moving into those big market opportunities, and that was very encouraging. On its data, so as Greg said, this was frustrating that they missed the endpoint in the first Phase II trial, but frustrating because it also demonstrated there's so much potential in this drug.
As Greg said, there was some data from that trial published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that demonstrated that the ability to elicit tissue repair, not just sort of preventing degrading of the tissue, but actually showing that it's repairing the tissue, which has a lot of implications. But it showed these improvements in bone erosion, in disability, in fatigue, and so that had a lot of implications to sort of slowing aging and to just to slow the progress and even reverse the progress of some of these really detrimental conditions that people suffer from, like this, that their focus is currently on with arthritis for. So, I that publication certainly increased market confidence that there's a mechanism of action here that's really interesting.
The efficacy of this drug is real, that there's a range of clinical indications and diseases where it could be used. So it was sort of frustrating because of its potential. And unfortunately, that benefit didn't manifest in particular primary endpoints chosen over the timescale and over the cohort of this first trial. But we've learned a lot from that. They're going to do another trial now that implements those learnings and focuses on the things that they think they can really create a difference with, and they're well funded to do that trial. So, that's the positive in that respect. I remain optimistic about the sort of long-term prospect of that company. And finally, on this slide, among our most valuable assets, Pulmocide. So, not a huge amount to report there because things are going well. Their trial is on track.
They're progressing according to plan. This is developing these respiratory treatments, inhaled treatments for respiratory infections like invasive pulmonary aspergillosis, which is a very nasty thing that you get wrong with your lungs, a sort of mold infection in the lungs. And their trial is approved as well. And so we're still expecting that to read out in sort of H2 2026 and have some results from that next year. The final one on this slide, but Greg also mentioned Oxford. So Oxford, we have taken a position on the holding there. It continues to make good technical progress. It's got very encouraging commercial progress. The company is doing well. It has been hard when we hope to raise money for the company.
A bit frustrating because we have sort of built those building blocks all around, but it's, we're just not quite over the line with that yet. But we are quite advanced now, in discussions with the major potential cornerstone. And so I hope to have some good news on that asset soon. So that's the sort of the higher value stuff in the portfolio. That's the kind of top end. But another, just picked out another handful of assets to mention because of some exciting developments in those assets. So Artios, recall, is a company that's developing DNA damage response-based cancer therapies. And they are focused on hard-to-treat solid tumors. It's now public that they're targeting pancreatic and colorectal cancers, both of which have a huge, unfortunately, unmet clinical need. So big market opportunity for the company, big commercial opportunity.
They did publish some of the sort of early data from their current trial, the phase two trial, at the American Association for Cancer Research Conference, and that data was very well received. They're funded to continue that trial and to explore the indications that they're seeing, so we expect to see results from that end of next year. Sort of early 2027 is the most likely time that we'll expect to. I have to sort of qualify all of these clinical trial expectations that there are always things that can go off track and it can be delayed, but at the moment, this is probably most importantly both on track and expecting the same timescales that we've already guided. Finally, there's two assets to mention in our clean tech portfolios.
OxCCU. I don't know, we maybe haven't spoken a huge amount about this company in the last few presentations, but this is a company in Oxford that's spun out of the University of Oxford that's developing the world's lowest cost, lowest emission methods of making sustainable aviation fuel. You use sort of waste carbon and you turn it into fuel for airplanes. It's good news for those of us who would like to continue traveling without being quite the impact on the environment that it currently has. That company raised GBP 28 million in a Series B round during the period. The exciting thing about that is the sort of incredibly impressive list of strategic investors who came in to really validate the proposition that OxCCU is working on. The round was led by Safran, which is the world's second largest aircraft equipment manufacturer.
The energy company, Aramco Ventures put in to the round, IAG, which is the parent company of British Airways, put in to that round. So a real kind of validation of their proposition based on the strategic interest that they had in strategic financial support that they've got. They've built demonstration plant. It's sat on the tarmac up there in Oxford Airport, that's kicking out jet fuel. It's working. It's producing jet fuel now. And they've started the process to develop a full-scale commercial project in the UK. So that will be the sort of next scale up of their their project. And finally, Hysata. We've talked about Hysata in these presentations before. Very compelling proposition. They have a hydrogen electrolyzer, a machine that produces hydrogen at 95% efficiency, which is well above anything that you will achieve if you buy a hydrogen electrolyzer off the shelf today.
So their 100 kW system, it is slightly delayed. But we anticipate that there was a possibility that there would be a delay on this 100 kW system. So that's built into their funding roadmap with the money that we raised with them last time. So they're still funded to use that system. And we're still expecting it to be commissioned during Q3, at the mid-quarter of this year. They've also got a field trial going on, a device, a machine running on a customer premises in Saudi Arabia. So this is not sat in the Hysata facility. It's sat halfway around the world. And that is working. And it's, they've reproduced that world-leading efficiency at that customer site. So they've demonstrated the ability to put the machine in different places. So great asset, world-leading efficiency. And with that, I will hand back to David now.
Thank you very much. Thanks so much. Yeah, financial results, so a nice review again, as always. I'm going to go through this fairly quickly. It pretty much just pulls together all the phrases and links we've been talking about. Overall cash, very strong again, GBP 237 million cash. That's actually up 47% from this time last year. And that's because of the successful exit of Featurespace at the end of last year, which, of course, has generated a significant amount of cash. We are, of course, slightly down from the year-end if we make investments. And I'll give you that cash flow in a minute, talk you through that. There was a small loss for the period, about 1.5%, about GBP 43 million loss.
It is worth making the point, as you've already heard, that since the year-end, nearly all of that has reversed, actually, through improvements in Nanopore and Hinge, about GBP 35 million. That's come back. It means combined with share buyback, actually, our NAV per share is now actually up. So it was briefly down at the half year from 97 to 96, now about a pound a share. That's, obviously a combination of the improvements since the year-end and also the share buyback, which improves the NAV per share as we go along. And their overhead is down about 14% period on period. I'll do a slide on those in a minute, talk you through it. This next slide could be long, could be short. I'm certainly going for the short option.
In brief, and as discussed in the interim results, there's a number of kind of uplifts over five or six companies and a number of write-downs, a similar number of companies, and a foreign exchange loss of GBP 14 million, which relates to the pound being strong when we convert from our American-denominated assets in particular. That may or may not reverse at some stage, depending on currency. Those elements just eliminate, quite frankly. You've got really just to do with two funding rounds, really, Artios and Oxa, where actually, as you've already heard, companies are performing well, but actually we've not either completed or haven't started a full funding. As such, we had no choice but to actually make some kind of provision against both. That accounts for sort of GBP 39 million at that.
So pretty much that is the story of the half, that just adjusted to those two assets in that small loss. But that loss has now been eliminated, between the year-end and today. That's why when we now look at the assets here, assets are down a small amount, from about GBP 1 billion to GBP 900 million. Those are rounded, it's actually down about GBP 6 million. So the combination of that small loss and the same shares we bought back, because of course, the buyback does actually, I think it's actually slightly smaller if you buy back shares. The concentration hasn't changed. So that's the bit of the slide. It's telling you there is no news. It was about exactly 56% of the top 10, at the year-end, and it is now. It's pretty much the same sort of ratio of how the portfolio looks.
Actually, the next slide's also no change. This is the slide I always do, but talks about how well the portfolio itself is funded, because of course, that's very important. Actually we're increasingly seeing this pattern whereby it was about a third that is funded to profitability, so you don't need to worry about that. Then there's about a third, which over the next year to year and a half, needs funding. Then another third that doesn't need funding until 2027 and beyond. So much of the portfolio is pretty well funded, but there will always be funding challenges and companies will raise funding at any point in time. So that kind of one-third, one-third, one-third rule is beginning to come, yeah, pretty well solid as a rule. Now this just pulls it all together. So here's the cash flows of what's happened.
And you've heard, I think, all of these numbers now. We've invested GBP 35 million in the period. It's spread over a number of assets, mostly current assets, only about 12%. That shows investment into new assets as a single new company in the series. Realizations we've talked about at length, GBP 30 million. Share repurchases, GBP 25. It happens almost exactly what we've realized we've used on buybacks. That's your current instance. But we are this year committed to 50% of our realizations to be done in the form of buybacks. It just so happens that some of the buybacks we've done relate to last year, so it doesn't quite work out the math. But in short, we will be doing, of course, this year, I think 50% of our realizations in buybacks. Overhead is down, as we've heard.
The net debt, actually, we generated about 2.6 net income on interest, but we've made some repayments on the debt in the period, which means the actual total movement is just a small reduction overall. And then there's a relatively large working capital movement. That relates to the licensing, which we just sort of started talking about a bit. While I'm on the licensing, we own certain licensing assets on behalf of Imperial College London. We're responsible for them. We often collect in the proceeds, and then actually we keep some, and some we distribute to other parties, for example, Imperial College London itself. And that means we sometimes have these working capital movements where we're paying out money in receipts on behalf of others. And that's where you get relatively large movement. But that's the story of the cash. Cash is still very, very strong.
And overhead, I'm very glad to say pretty much exactly what we said there'd be. So about 15%, or this time compared with this time last year. But we're going to do what we said we'd do. When we did the cost reduction in the second half of last year, we said we'd reduce the 23 number, which was about GBP 22.5 million net, to about GBP 16.5 million net. And that's what we're going to do. 23% reduction. That still looks like what we'll achieve to the year-end. So I think without further ado, I'll pass back to Greg.
Thank you, Dave. You're welcome. So, leaving some good time for questions. So the summary of the half-year results. So we made good progress in the first half. We saw a number of encouraging developments in the portfolios, many of which Mark has touched on.
And the public markets were a particularly fair value contributor, including that Hinge Health's IPO and Oxford Nanopore's strong trading. And we made good progress on exits to GBP 30 million. And that momentum into half two means we remain confident of our target of achieving GBP 250 million of exits by the end of 2027. As Dave just mentioned, our NAV per share essentially stabilized over the period, and has subsequently increased since the period ends to GBP 1 a share, about GBP 1 a share. And on the scale-up capital and expanding our resources as a group, our capital resources as a group, we continue to see a big opportunity. And while the market hasn't necessarily moved as quickly as we hoped or expected, we have good confidence of securing at least one new mandate by the time we next see you all on the IMC platform for our full year results.
I'll just quickly remind you, looking forward, our investment case is based on these three sort of hypotheses. The first is that there's significant value in U.K. science and technology, given our world-leading position there. The IP Group as one of the pioneers in this space and with a long track record is well-positioned to exploit that. And that we hope we've set out an attractive shareholder opportunity, in the next six months and indeed out to 2027. And then, just because I think this is a good form, these were the priorities and future areas of focus that I set out at the full year, which we are aiming to achieve, over the course of the time between now and the end of the year in 2027 on the exits. And I think on all of those, we're making good progress.
So I won't go through them each in turn, and I'll cover them all off when we report to you our full year results. So thank you everyone for listening, and we will now turn to questions.
Great. Thank you very much. Well, that's gone well so far. We're typically 40 minutes from a 38. So we've got quite a lot of questions, but maybe not quite as many as normal. So we may get through this now. Lauren Beth, if you don't mind, I think we've answered yours as you had a question about why we're selling Hinge and keeping some of the smaller positions. I think Mark answered that while he was presenting. So I'll move on to the next. Kean, nice to have you. Analyst from Deutsche. Nice to have you here, Kean. You've got three questions. I'm going to do them one at a time.
Mark, I'll do the first one with you. Might the adverse uncertain conditions for research in the U.S., for example, funding like the NIH, create opportunities in the U.K.?
Maybe. But you know, there are headwinds as well and some foreign investments being, you know, withdrawn from the U.K., from the newspaper a couple of weeks or so ago. I think we frequently see. I remember a few years ago this question was about Brexit and the time before that it was about the recession. And so that there are lots of these kind of ebbs and flows of funding. I think it takes time to have an impact on us because it takes time for them to filter through to the funding of science.
And that takes time to filter through to the commercialization that's coming out of those research labs. So I would say not in the short term, but maybe in the longer term. Thank you.
Kane, second question. I'm going to point that at you, Greg. Why do you think Larry Ellison is so keen on R&D?
Sure. I think looking at the time the question came in, it might have been before I said why I think he's keen. I mean, I think the commercial answer is that the technology is incredibly well suited to two of those big themes that they're trying to solve, the big global challenges they're trying to solve, through the Ellison Institute of Technology, particularly around sort of the human health and genetics, but also on the sort of sources of food and agriculture.
Clearly they're building a significant position there, which is interesting. So, I haven't spoken to him directly. So I couldn't say definitively, but it's a good sign if you know, he's had such an incredible track record in like 40 years of delivering value through being able to not necessarily be ahead of the curve on technology adoption, but certainly delivering real cash value. So I think it's a good sign, but also it's one to watch.
Yep. I've got a point. The next one to you, Mark, the note's coming. Hinge Health up strongly post period end. Will you be inclined to take some profits?
Well, we're locked in at the moment and we'll take some of the IPO.
Then, as I said earlier, it's an evaluation of the liquidity and the value that's available to us at any given time afterwards.
Thank you very much.
And as you'd expect, obviously, we don't want to tell you about our intentions on our quoted companies because there's smart people out there that can do things with that information. But, yeah, we're pleased with that holding and it's a good source of liquidity over time.
The next one, Sam. Nice to have you here. Sam, another analyst at Berenberg. Good to have you here, Sam. I'm mentioning this because people in the past have said, can you make it clear when someone's an analyst and when they're not? So I'm doing that. I'm going to split this question. I'll do the first bit, Mark, and then maybe give you the second if that's all right.
First, it's one sentence, but would you be able to provide more detail on your IP licensing portfolio and then separately and therapeutic programs when you expect licensing in terms of ramp up? I'll, I'll perhaps do a little bit on the licensing. Licensing traditionally has been a relatively small part of our business. We inherited the licensing in part of the acquisition when we bought Touchstone. They, as part of their remit, used to do the licensing for Imperial College. They had a number, a very large number of patents. Some are what we call active, ones that actually were that we had an agreement around them, and some that were ones that were just exploratory and we're still waiting for maybe some of the license. And we retained all of those active licenses. So they're, they're a really big portfolio, about 80 different licenses.
The actual strength of it is relatively small traditionally. We've been recognizing something like between GBP 500,000 and GBP 700,000 income a year. That tends to be the patent licenses. You have to have a large number. Those can generate relatively small amounts. And from time to time, you can sometimes get some really big licenses. A single license can do 95%, 90%, 9% sometimes of your license income. We have kind of three licenses out there. Greg's already referred to the Net Zero one. It's early. We're not going to start making claims about their value, and we're not recognizing in the books. Actually, in accordance with accounting standards, it's unlikely we will recognize in the books until such time as actual licensing income is recognized. So, you know, you can't kind of recognize it like a potential intangible or something.
But any of the top three have the potential to, in time, generate significant revenues. Metsera is now about a $3.8 billion cap company of GLP-1 agonists. And it was promising at the end of the phase two trial. So I have some notes out there. If that got to a phase two trial, if that then became a successful product, there may in time be some, some decent licensing income that would come to us. And some of it would be also shared with Imperial College. So that's probably all I can say at the moment. At the moment, no impact on the financials, no significant impact on the financials. But maybe in time, maybe, and I'm thinking maybe two to three years time, we may start seeing if some of the things go well, some, decent licensing income. And we'll talk about that at the time.
It's a bit of a wide one to talk about all the therapeutic programs. Is there any you want to touch on, Mark, or where we might treat that question of belt and braces? I don't know if there's any you over and above what we've already talked about there.
Yeah, I wonder whether that was at NAP as well. So it's probably, yeah, I think that is.
It's worth saying in the appendices in our results presentation, we do a, you know, sort of a summary of the main holdings and where they are in their clinical development and our evaluation. And so what we're seeing as milestones coming up. So that's a sort of a ready reckoner. And then very happy to talk about in more detail and any of the others we haven't covered. Then we next see you, Sam.
I've got another one for you, Sam. I'll let you split yours. I'll give it to you, Greg. I mean, given the current cash position and potential exits over the next couple of years, is there any change in your thinking around buybacks?
Well, I hope we've got a pretty clear policy out there. You know, while the discount is greater than 20%, the proportion of cash that we allocate to returning to shareholders is being done by way of a buyback. We think that's the most appropriate way to do that at the moment. And at the moment for this year, we're using 50% of our realizations to that end.
We will, as always, look at that number for next year. Historically, it's been around 20% of realizations as we've returned, which we see as a sort of a more sustainable and steady state. But obviously we'll look at the, you know, the relative opportunities versus buybacks of our own shares versus portfolio opportunities and some small number of new opportunities. Yep. Thank you. So no real change in the policy. The application changes, you know, each year, based on circumstances.
Great. Next, Josh L., not an analyst. I'll bring someone aware. I'll probably take this. How has there been no First Light Fusion fair value movement despite the complete change of strategy during the period? There has been a significant change in strategy and actually some very promising technical developments, which I won't try to talk to.
You can ask Mark about those if you're interested, but actually, reviewing the valuation, one of the main considerations for us is like the probability of funding, the likely valuation of funding, and when we reviewed it, we came to the conclusion that actually the kind of value we carried out looks pretty robust around what we'd expect to value it at.
I might be wrong. My recollection is that the news statement was fairly well advanced at the time of the full year valuation, so that was
Pretty much factored in. Yeah, exactly, and at the moment, I think, you know, from where I'm sitting, so the technical side of valuing it, I think that actually, you know, we carry it where we sort of think it may be valued. We may be wrong, but we will see.
But, after quite a lot of discussion, we felt it was fairly valued and the movement in its actual carrying value is actually related to money we've invested in the business. So it's come from, I think, that's fair to think.
So, that's next. Who is this team? From, from IMC, hi IP Group team. Nice momentum in portfolio. Thank you. Any plans on a partial sale down the line, particularly given the IP initiative? Well, Greg's already mentioned what's unlikely to come from that. I don't know if you want to say anything further, but what's unlikely to come from our sales plan for public companies. Anyone want to answer that, Greg at all?
I don't think anything to add to what we've said on that front. We know we do look at it all the time.
It's not. I've said in the past, it's not our strategy to have big holdings in large quoted listed companies that our shareholders can access directly. So it's a matter of time that we're very happy holder given the progress in the portfolio. And we always look at liquidity.
Thank you. Next question from Bill H. Probably Mark is a value. What is the role of IP Group's managing partner?
I don't know if you'd like to outline your role. There's a shareholder value to increase the value of our existing portfolio and to make exciting new investments into companies that will be future world-changing companies. So I have responsibility across the portfolio. I'm the person that chairs our investment committee.
I'm sure that the decision making is sound and as good as it can be. And I steer the decisions around transactions, investments and exits.
Thank you again. I think one for you, Mark, about how much you want to talk about this. Can you? This is Milos. So another analyst, Edison this time. Hello, Milos. Nice to have you. Can you give us an update on the monetization of Ultraleap patents? What are you able to talk about on that, Mark? I think I can.
I wasn't sure if I could, but I can speak to the CEO, and he's told me that they did a LinkedIn post on Monday actually on this, that the transaction you might recall we had an agreement to sell the patent portfolio to a company called Sim IP, who are specialists in monetizing patent portfolios.
We had to close that transaction when we last spoke publicly about this. That transaction has now closed. So that's very positive. The company has received the approval for that initial part of the transaction. There is an earn-out agreement. So IP monetized that portfolio quite smoothly. So it's very positive. We really believe in the value of that portfolio. There's a lot of places where we think those patents are valuable. So we're optimistic about future fund flows from that.
Thank you. Next one. There's more questions coming in actually. Questions are picking up pace. Robin M., I'll give it to you, Greg, I think. Maybe you can talk a little bit about cash raise from private market secondary sales, both in the past and going forward.
Is this becoming an easy way to raise capital? I think possibly with a small deal we did last year. Yeah. I'll let you, Mark. So we did a small secondary last year. I think there's another question further down that asks about what how were the assets marked and all that sort of stuff? And I think at the time we said that, on average across the various holdings on the balance sheet, it was a slight premium. It was about NAV, maybe a tiny premium, to NAV on the balance sheet. And it was across a few companies on the Parkwalk fund, and a few companies on the balance sheet side.
The exact total was around GBP 23 million, I think, across the two pools. And we also said that there were things like preemption rights and all that sort of stuff, which meant we couldn't complete the pool transfers that we planned to. I think we did just over two-thirds of the GBP 23 million, I think. So that transaction is all played through, and we do look at other options like that. You know, we've explored, all the time that I've been at IP Group, which is, you know, sort of 15 plus years, we've always looked at, are there ways that we can accelerate value through these sort of structured transactions?
I think the secondary markets are interesting at the moment, and they're interesting potentially for us, potentially as we think about how we access scale-up capital and build some strategic relationships. But also the secondary market is quite interesting because we have a permanent balance sheet and our liquidity position is reasonably strong, relatively speaking. There is clearly an opportunity wherein companies that we're existing shareholders of that we particularly like, or even potentially companies that we've tracked over the last few years that have made significant developments, but perhaps their cap table isn't as strong as it could be, then clearly there's secondary opportunities for us. So yes, we look at it on both sides, and, you know, we'll always consider those opportunities.
Next one, I'll point towards you, Mark, is from Milos again.
And it's one that, probably this is a general feedback on, what appetite for M&A and licensing deals do you see across the lifestyle sector at present? It's quite a wide reaching question there.
I mean, it seems good. My context is perhaps lacking a bit because I wasn't responsible for lifestyle until a year or so ago. But I don't have a full history of staying close to this market in the way that others might. But we've had quite a lot of interest in particularly one of our portfolio companies that's been some inbound interest from potential sort of license stroke acquirers. So in the small sample set that we have, it's maybe not representative, but it seems positive for us.
Great. Thank you all. I'll have a go at the next one. Congratulations.
This is David R.
Congratulations on a good set of results. Thank you for that. On what basis is the optimistic view of exit of GBP 250 million for the period through to 2027?
Well, it's basically on our internal projections. So you can imagine we're running this sort of capital allocation process all the time. So we're always updating estimates of how much we need to invest, how much we think we're going to realize, therefore what's the closing cash balance going to be. And in that process, we're always running our three-year projections of what our realizations are going to be. And we do feel relatively optimistic in the period to the end of 2027, we will generate that level of realizations. And to be clear, that doesn't include our portfolio. That's not what. There's no plan for selling that portfolio, not in that.
So, one, we hope maniple itself, if it does the numbers they're talking about, could easily grow to a GBP 200 million asset on its own, our share at least by that time. So that's separate. We do think looking particularly at the number of the therapeutic programs, which we think will come through in that timeline, reporting, both in 2026 and in 2027, which we feel if they are successful could generate really quite sizable realizations for us. So, when you look at our numbers, I mean, we'll get too much detail. When you look at our estimates for what we think we're going to realize, we have weighted probabilities, all types of complexities to try and estimate it. But we're increasingly finding we're relatively accurate at it.
Although it's a sort of a balancing day with 10% probability of that and 40% probability of that, actually it seems to work out relatively well, which is why we've been able to manage our cash benefit well. So in short, it's based upon our current expectations of the portfolio as it stands. And there are quite a number of, as you can see, benefits like therapeutic readout, therapeutic, quite big programs reading out, which if any one of those work could make a serious dent in that number. We are certainly, as we've already said, on target to doing the number we plan to do this year already. Next one, Haran, I hope you don't think I'm ignoring you. I think this is a question around the secondary we did last year, which Greg's put in too, and I think we've answered.
So I'll have a next question, which could answer the last one I hadn't read, but I will read it out. We'll see what we've got. This is from David R.S. Your ambition is simply to increase NAV rather than achieve a more typical target of say 15%, which might be expected for VC investing. Should shareholders assume either that you're very cautious or simply don't believe you can create typical value on this risk or asset class in the UK?
Greg, how about you open that one? I think we'd all have a view on that.
Yeah. It would be great to get into that.
We've got to be realistic with the current environment that we're operating in. However, it's fair to say that our ambition or our objective is to deliver compelling financial returns that are consistent with that risk profile.
Certainly when the IC needs to consider any investment in a portfolio company, we're not looking at, you know, will we keep this holding flat? We're looking at VC type multiples and VC type IRRs. So the objective is to have more of those successful returns. We focus the investment strategy more into those areas where we've seen those successful returns in the past, but also, you know, importantly where we think there is return to be had in the future, in delivering against this sort of side stack investing environment that the market views. And is in particular to that? I hear that. No. No. Hopefully we're moving into a period where, you know, the environment is a bit more accommodative and, you know, we're seeing good pickup in M&A interest.
I wouldn't say it's sort of like, you know, a wall of M&A interest, but certainly compared to the last couple of years, there's quite a marked increase in inquiries. I hope that's obviously what it's the sort of cash on cash returns ultimately, which are important. I think if you look at the track record of things we've had, including Featurespace recently and others, the cash on cash record there is very good. It's, you know, sort of five, six times and up in the sort of 20-30% IRR. So that's what we're targeting. The NAV gives you an idea of how it's going over time, but sometimes we have NAV setbacks and that doesn't necessarily mean that the company's not going to deliver strong cash on cash returns in the future. I agree.
I also think just in terms of the certainty plan achievement, certainly when you look at some of the areas we now focus on, as Greg said, actually mathematically, you can see the past, no proof of the future, but you can see investing in those areas in the past, we have achieved those sort of returns. So it's certainly a number we have to aspire to and believe we will achieve. Andrew M next, talking about the fall in value of Oxford, which has been partially explained by Greg, as he has mentioned some, you know, good technical progress. Could we perhaps, Mark, have a little bit more about how we feel there's technical progress despite the fall in value? Yeah.
Yeah, I've got an email from the CTO once every couple of weeks talking about the exciting technical progress. Most of it's in the context of deployment on actual vehicles as real-world applications. They're doing a lot of work. Some areas I don't want to go into too much detail because it's sort of commercially sensitive information, but they're doing a lot of work deploying their software onto the real-world vehicles. One is in Jacksonville, in the U.S., where I got an email from the CPO the other day saying they're now over a thousand journeys and over 4,000 kilometers traveled autonomously. I believe all those passengers survived the experience, but that seems to be going very well. The sort of equivalent proof point in the off-road domain, they're currently fitting out the trucks that transport big containers around ports.
And, the CPO has been sending me videos of these trucks that we've now got two of these things and they can drive around without driving into each other. And, so it's very rapid progress being made of deploying this software on unusual vehicles, accommodating all the parameters of those vehicles and the different requirements of their environment and operating effectively in those environments. So, yeah, I think from a technical perspective, they move at great pace at Oxford and it's very impressive.
Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Going to the next one, Haran again. You do get your question out this time. There were reports in the press regarding Hinge Health that some shareholders sold shares at the time of their most recent results. Could IP Group have sold at the time?
Yeah, I think that may refer to the tender sale.
I guess there was a provision which allowed them to sell in that period, which other shareholders couldn't. I'm in contact with the bank that ran with the company pretty regularly. I spoke to them a couple of times around that time that the start sales occurred. So no, that wasn't obviously come out for a lot.
Yeah, no, we can confidently say we couldn't have done no. No, we're aware of it. We've tested the market. We know what we can and can't do and we couldn't have done. Next one, Andrew: a GBP 5 million investment in First Light. Yeah, I think I answered that, Mark, or not? It was effectively bridge funding, a standard way we often fund our companies. I don't know if.
Yes, operating capital that's paying the salaries of the people that are contributing to the research, developing this product that they're selling to the people who are assuming the fusion and the people who are selling that product. So on.
That's what it's come to. But I should warn everybody, by the way, but we are exactly at 11 o'clock. So those of you only had an hour, we won't be offended if you leave, but we're going to carry on. I think I've got about five more questions, so we will carry on. So for those that are engaged, stay with us. You've been guessing about another 10 minutes. But thank you for those that have to leave. I'm going to head to you, Greg. Slightly unusual, but interesting question. Which competitors do you use as internal benchmarks?
Or rather, are there any public or private funding vehicles you view as best in class that you draw inspiration from?
It's a good question. It's a good question. Yeah. Competitors or comparators in the UK, I mean, there's a reasonably well-developed market in the UK for certainly the early stage bits of commercializing UK science. And a lot of the comparators, we don't really compete with them significantly more often because there's more opportunities for capital generally at the moment. And you're often looking to collaborate rather than compete. You do compete if it's a competitive deal. So, on the UK side, there's Oxford Science Enterprises. We've got a small holding in that. We were a founder shareholder in setting that business up. Same with Cambridge Innovation Capital. Northern Gritstone, we work reasonably closely with.
We just launched that fund I was talking about for early stage EIS investing alongside them in the portfolio. We also work with some of the other well-known VCs in the UK, Amadeus and, and then I suppose some of the people that I have looked up to in terms of scale of business. I guess it's businesses like ICG, who very successfully used their flagship credit product to build out a very scaled asset management business, bringing in private capital to support their existing portfolio and indeed to then build that out. So that I often look at those comparators as sort of, you know, ambitious directions of travel for the group because certainly it does feel that there is a large amount of capital that wants to allocate to this space.
And so clearly being in a position where we're a public listed entity, we've got the, you know, the professional valuations and the systems and the reporting, and the track record puts us in a, you know, hopefully in an attractive position for those partners who are looking, sort of reputationally at working with people that have been around for a period of time. So, yeah, it's, it's probably those sorts of businesses. And of course there are some, you know, world leading VCs who are focused in particular areas and we look at those as best practice and various of the team have their sort of their favorite bloggers in the VC space that we track their thought leadership.
There's some very, you know, very well resourced ones, VCs on the West Coast, some of whom are increasingly moving into the deep tech space where we are. And so looking at their pronouncements and how they're seeing the world is all, you know, useful information for us.
Thank you. I'm going to move on to, Ian R. I'm going to point this in your direction, Mark, if that's all right. It's a question we sort of get from time to time. How are you finding the U.K. universities at present? Are their funding issues making much difference to the way they're approaching tech transfer? And sort of separately but connected, are any of the government funded schemes being impacted by budget constraints? And has this affected you at all?
I would say yes, but I would say that's been the case for the past 15 years. They've always had these constraints on budgets and that that have always manifested in their approach to tech transfer. It sort of varies by university based on recent success or lack of in the domain of commercializing innovation. I think there's some universities that have had one standout success that are much more kind of ready to invest in the area of tech transfer than others who have had their fingers burnt by it. I wouldn't say that I've observed a huge sort of sea change or big fluctuation in the last period, but there is definitely always a budgeting pressure on tech transfer activities.
I think the government funded schemes being impacted by government, by budget constraints. Again, a little bit to arrive at last and, you know, there is, there's definitely you will hear that if you walk the corridors of universities that budget constraints are impacting their research. But I think in some of the exciting areas that we're focused on in areas like quantum computing and some of these emerging AI research work, there is still good money flowing into those areas and we've seen some very exciting research. The UK has always done a lot with a little. We've always done good research with limited resources.
Thank you very much. It's very helpful. I'll go on next. I think I'll probably take this one. It looks like my direction is, Andrew M. Thank you for this. Is it really accurate that share buyback programs accelerated?
I mean, it's up compared to 2024, but pretty stable in 2025. Well, I mean, I guess the answer is yes and yes to that. It certainly accelerated compared with what it did historically. I mean, certainly the amount we bought, I think it's about 25 million shares just in the last year compared with sort of 88 million, I think ever. So it has, yes, accelerated. But it's a fair point. Within the year, it hasn't been buying back at a really relatively constant rate during the year. Why can our program be increased further? Well, it could obviously, but there's actually correct balance. I think we see, you know, we think we're buying at about the right rate and using about the right proportion of our proceeds on that buyback program. We see it's been relatively successful.
Ironically helped by very low share price and then we bought quite a large amount of shares in the first half year at an average of about GBP 0.47. So we think we've got the balance right. We've already made the commitment. We've been half of the proceeds this year. So, I think we feel that we've got the balance about right. Of course, one could always do more. There are some people that are saying, "Why don't you do less?" So it is about trying to get a balance fairly. Next one, I'll probably do that as well. That's also fairly accountancy, doesn't it? From Haran. The cash generated in H1 from sales. What was the cash value relative to holding value? Well, ironically, they were all actually. There was about five sales over the period and they're pretty much all public company.
In terms of, we haven't talked about whether they're up or down because it was just the market price at the time, and a number of them went, I think, in terms of like Shan, for example, went for about double. That was the main one. I think we got about GBP 8.8 million. I think at the year-end that was closing books at about GBP 4.4 million. We haven't though, it doesn't really make sense to talk about whether we sold them up or down at times because they were public market shares in any case. That's another quick look at the next one. Sorry, coming down. Phil N. We've heard about this before. Phil N., if you don't mind, you're asking a question about whether we could sell Hinge or not. I think we've answered that fairly comprehensively. This one's always a tricky one.
I'll ask Phil if, and I mean, probably I'll point this to you, Greg. Always difficult, but for the shares to ride, you need happy existing shareholders and new buyers at some point. So who are the people who are selling? Is there a pattern, a trend or what? And are excesses, is there an excess being dribbled out by a certain style of owners? I thought, yeah, quite a lot in that question. You have another go at that?
Yeah. Well, the overall backdrop, probably you'll have seen the same sort of data that we see around net flows in and out of U.K.-focused equities, which, you know, continue to be negative, quite significantly negative. Global equities. Actually, the flows have started to become negative overall, but particularly the U.K. has been negative.
There has been, certainly in my experience over the last 10, 15 years, the number of humans that we go and talk to in the UK who are managing small mid-cap capital has definitely decreased and the number of funds has definitely decreased. We get a monthly register analysis each month, and we go through that and try and get some clues as to who's buying and selling. Often there's changes period to period on the tracker funds, and sometimes from month to month you get some of the larger or middle sized holdings either reducing the position a bit or increasing the position a bit.
There's not really a huge pattern that I could talk to if I'm honest, you know, our job is to deliver on the strategy, to be able to communicate that strategy, and we seek to do that as actively as we can do. We've got a number of capital markets events we've done over the course of the year to attract new investors, and Dave, maybe you just want to talk a little bit about the efforts we've done with brokers this year and the other sort of, given the UK has been more net reduction in capital available, where the other relationships have been.
Yeah. Yeah, we're very proactive actually. I mean, we have quite a wide range of brokers, our primary brokers extremely supportive and very good, Numis and Berenberg.
But we do also get some help with an asset called TKDY in New York, a small team of five who have been. They've sort of identified about 200 American investors who are interested in UK stocks and they've been getting us meetings. I probably have a meeting on average about once a week with them. And if they're interested enough, then Greg joins me and we do a joint meeting. We think it wasn't actually hard to tell. I know it sounds funny. We get a full shareholder register every month and you're paging down it, trying to analyze. Sometimes you can't immediately identify who is what because they get brought through nominees, for example. But we think some of those American presentations are beginning to bear fruit. Canaccord Genuity has also been helping us as well.
We've finally had some meetings both in America, and we've also got some road shows in Europe coming up. Waschal has helped us. They took us on a road show in Switzerland recently. We're actually extremely active, and you will find by the end of the year our head of global capital will want to send you some presentations from the Middle East and also Asia. It's definitely not due to a lack of energy, and we are trying to get out and see people, and we think that is beginning to pay dividends. We think, and some of that's part of the recovery in the share price, but we are getting people to find out how interesting the story is and find out how extraordinary the discount is and what the opportunity is, which is pretty much what we're telling people.
Next one is from Lucas, a shareholder, from Switzerland. Hello, Lucas. Good to have you there, Rivers, and you've written, just thinking out loud, you're giving an additional GBP 200 million in exits in private holdings till 2027. So you add that onto sort of maniple, which sort of hopefully by then something like GBP 170 million. Are you saying that there's nearly sort of 70%-80% of current market cap might be achieved? I think the answer is yes. That was pretty much what I said earlier. Yeah, that is about right. Obviously, there's a lot of ifs in that, but if we achieve that, which we believe we will on the sort of non-maniple holding, if maniple still performs as it should, we believe it will. Yes, there's something between GBP 150-£200 million maniple on top of that number.
We will hope, we will see.
Last one, Dave B. Hello, Dave B. That's always nice to have one number. You're so planted. Yeah. Why are you so good? I know something. Dave B, I'm interested in you, Mark. Hello. Do you think that the stance on U.S. drug pricing and tariffs by the U.S. administration is affecting pricing in the biotech market for ultimately successful innovation?
If so, does that mean the model needs to be revisited so it's sufficiently profitable given the huge development costs? Fantastic. So repeated question. Very question. But it's dangerous being a political question. But from our perspective, yes, I think we've got to assume that there has an impact. This is a highly sensitive impact. It's something that the team is factoring into the evaluation work that we do every time we make a transaction in the portfolio.
And so, with the sense of the model needing to be revised, I think it's about making sure that we're putting money in at the right price to reflect the ultimate discernible value of the company. And so that's whether you describe it as a revision of the model on a macro basis. We're doing it from the ground up of looking at each transaction to get the value that's meant to be delivered in the context of the current market. But the other thing I'd say about that, I don't think we're really seeing this in the conversations we're having with firms in the portfolio.
Yet, I don't think. I haven't heard that we've had farmers coming to us and saying, "We couldn't possibly engage with you on this or pay this much for, for this company on the basis that our ground has shifted beneath it." But that, that may come. And the last question is not a question. Thank you, Philip M. Thank you.
Thank you, Philip M. We appreciate it. And thank you everybody who stayed with us this long. And thanks for all the questions. That's the 29th and last question, James. Perfect, guys.
That's great. And thank you as usual for being so generous of your time there and addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this morning. And of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you after the presentation.
But, Greg, perhaps before really now, just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that'd be great.
Thanks, Dave. Yeah. So to summarize again, we've made strong progress in 2025 year to date, good progress on cash proceeds, and that gives us good confidence around that GBP 250 million of exits target to the end of 2027. I think the standout in performance for the first half or standout transaction was that successful Hinge Health IPO, which we're very pleased to see and delighted for the team and of course for our financial returns. And that's helped NAV per share now get up to about GBP 1 a share and hopefully we go up from here.
And then on the share price, we've done, you know, continue to do two things that we think we can to close the discount, convert more portfolio into cash and return that excess capital with discipline. At today's price, we still think that buybacks are an accretive tool. And so we've been using that tool more aggressively that year, as David said, to good effect. And we'll continue to weigh buybacks against new investments, strictly on a returns basis. And so we, you know, we are one of the world's most experienced university science investors. And so we remain uniquely positioned to capitalize on the sort of the fiscal reform that we're seeing and hopefully this rising demand for high growth innovation. So thank you all for listening and look forward to updating you on progress for the rest of the year and into 2026.
Perfect. Great. That's great. And thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This won't take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of IP Group PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all.