Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the IP Group plc full-year results investor presentation. 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 our responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll, and if you'd 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, Jake. Thank you very much and welcome everyone to IP Group's 2025 full-year results presentation. Thanks as always to you and the team for hosting today's session. These forums, which are, you know, open to all shareholders and potential shareholders are a really important part of how we communicate the IP Group story, because this is a business where understanding the long-term context genuinely matters. I'll start by saying we are speaking to you today live from Berenberg's Annual U.K. Corporate Conference. Thanks to the Berenberg team for hosting us. Apologies that we're not on video. The hotel Wi-Fi at The Grove isn't quite up to video, but the IMC platform has done wonders to get us online nonetheless.
You can see the slides, and you'll just have to remember what we look like from the images on the website. The good news is we are here for a day and have a full schedule of investor meetings ahead, and we see that as a good reflection of the engagement and the interest around the strategy and the progress that we're making. I think it's fair to say we are presenting against a backdrop of considerable global uncertainty geopolitically, economically, technologically, and I think investors are understandably asking tougher questions about, you know, the durability and the resilience and where long-term value will be created. Of course, one of the most active debates at the moment is all around technology itself, and in particular, the impact of AI on things like traditional software businesses.
Some of you might have seen recent commentary from leading investors such as Andreessen Horowitz or a16z, and they have argued that AI is fundamentally reshaping the whole application software landscape. Some others have labeled this as the SaaSpocalypse. I think the important nuance in that work is that AI doesn't eliminate value, it moves it, and it's moving it away from thin application layers towards hard IP, towards data, infrastructure, and real-world constraints like energy. Interestingly, that debate really sort of actually sharpens the IP Group investment case. We have very limited exposure, if any, to application layer SaaS in the portfolio and instead focus on deep tech, clean tech, and life sciences, businesses that are built around defensible science and intellectual property. Many of our companies are not so much disrupted by AI.
They are enabled by it, whether through compute power or energy systems, advanced materials or drug discovery, and they support the infrastructure needed for an AI-enabled world. Although you can't see me, I'm Greg Smith, and as CEO, I have the privilege of leading IP Group and working alongside an exceptional team on our mission to accelerate the power of science for a better future. With me on today's call are our Managing Partner, Mark Reilly, who is in Oxford, and our CFOO, David Baynes, who is with me here. As usual, this presentation will be available on the IR section of our website. Of course, please note all the usual important disclaimers about the information that we give here, particularly any forward-looking statements that might be contained within. Here's today's running order.
I will start with an overview of the 2025 full-year results and put them in a sort of broader strategic and market context. Mark will then go deeper into portfolio progress and the future value opportunities there. DB will follow up with a detailed work through of the financials, how we're thinking about things like valuation, which are always high on shareholders' minds, cash and capital allocation. I'll then summarize and look forward, before we do some Q&A. As Jake said, please post questions and we'll endeavor to answer them all. Let me start with the headline. As regular attendees on our results call will remember, delivering positive NAV per share growth was my stated priority for 2025. It's pleasing to be able to report that we delivered against that objective.
NAV per share increased to GBP 1.10p, an increase of 13% over the year and about 15% from the last time we reported at the half year. The largest contributor to the value was the rapid progression in both stage and scale of a group of obesity drug compounds that are now being developed by Pfizer. A clear example of how long-held scientific value can be recognized at scale with substantial downstream economics now anchored to a global pharma platform. We made good progress on realizations. We generated GBP 68 million in cash exits in the year, and that allowed us to continue investing behind our highest conviction opportunities and allowed us to retire almost 10% of the company shares during the year through our buyback program.
Taken together, this is exactly the type of year we set out to deliver. Now for share growth, disciplined realizations, and capital returned to shareholders. I think it's important to be clear about the nature of venture returns. Outcomes, and therefore our year-to-year results, are often driven by large single events. Now, that's not at all unusual in this asset class. In fact, it's quite often what good looks like as portfolios mature to the point of exit. A good recent example was last financial year, full year 2024, where the Featurespace exit was the standout event, which delivered our largest cash realization to date and demonstrated really clearly our ability to take a company from being the first institutional backer through to a strategic exit. This year, the progress, both clinical and financial, of the licensed obesity compounds has played a similar role.
I think what matters most, however, is not any single event in isolation, but whether we are building a repeatable track record of delivering these outcomes over time. We are increasingly seeing that pattern emerge across the portfolio as companies mature, as scientific risk is retired, and assets move on to becoming platforms capable of scaling globally. Finally, on that Pfizer obesity exposure, we've recognized the fair value of that interest this year, and that reflects a discounted risk-adjusted view of the current position. I think it's equally important to recognize that this isn't a ceiling on the value. The ultimate value will be driven by clinical, regulatory, and commercial progress over the coming years, and we think there remains substantial upside potential alongside the inherent risks that DB will cover in more detail in his section.
In short, full year 2025 is a year where we've delivered against our near-term priorities and strengthened the long-term value embedded in the portfolio. I want to now briefly explain the background to this year's financial outcome. I think this helps put in context the really long-term nature of the opportunity you're discussing. Now, you probably won't recognize the gentleman in this image. However, this is Professor Sir Stephen Bloom, and here he is speaking at an international neuroscience and medicine conference, the Brain Forum in Saudi Arabia in late 2013, so 13, 14 years ago. At this point in his talk, he was reflecting on academic research into the role of gut hormones in appetite and metabolic control that had happened decades earlier.
In fact, his research started in the 1980s in a London medical school, which became part of Imperial towards the turn of the century. Interestingly, during those years, he was also the chief of service for pathology and endocrinology at Hammersmith Hospital. I think this quote helped sort of set in context quite nicely how what he saw in his clinic inspired his breakthrough work. I think that proximity of research and clinical practice is one of the real strengths in the U.K. research and innovation ecosystem. Now from a patient point of view, the scale of the problem that Professor Bloom was describing is immense. Today, around one in nine adults globally, about 600 million people, live with diabetes. Hundreds of millions more live with obesity, around one in six adults.
These conditions contribute to millions of premature deaths each year. The International Diabetes Federation estimates diabetes drives about $1 trillion in health expenditure, while McKinsey estimates roughly $2 trillion as a result of obesity, and that it's associated with about 5% of worldwide deaths. I think that combination of huge unmet clinical need, societal cost, and obviously the rapid science progress, is what has driven more recent sustained investment and innovation in this space. I think it also probably goes some way to explaining why large pharma companies are now committing very significant capital to this area and these pipelines. I guess for us and for our shareholders, it's a bit of a reminder that the value we're seeing crystallize now is, you know, in common with many IP Group portfolio companies, the result of decades of foundational science.
That journey took place over three decades, and often the commercial relevance value only becomes visible many years later. IP Group's role is to engage early, take and price complexity and technology risk, and support the transition from discovery to development and commercial relevance. Our involvement began in the early 2010s, and this reflects our role at the commercialization end of the science, not just the financing end. Through our subsidiary, Imperial Innovations, we effectively operated as the tech transfer office for Imperial College London, and that meant working right at the interface between world-class research and early commercialization. In the case of Zihipp, a new company, this involved spinning out research from Professor Bloom's lab into a dedicated vehicle, securing exclusive rights to a family of GLP-1 related patents, and ensuring that the IP position was robust enough to underpin future clinical development.
Zihipp, the company, was actually only incorporated in 2012, and it lay largely dormant through the next few years. Back at that time, there wasn't really meaningful venture or pharma interest in obesity at today's scale. We continued to support the academic team in the background over several years before the IP was eventually licensed from us into the company in early 2019. Zihipp actually existed as a really streamlined operation with about five people, no premises, and relying heavily on Imperial College for all the early preclinical and early clinical work while they engaged with potential investors, and we remained on the board during that time. That kind of early involvement is very typical of IP Group. We aim to be a long-term partner to world-class science, and we step in at points where the risk profile is often too complex for most capital.
Other than raising a few million GBP of development capital in 2020, Zihipp stayed very lean. The company was actually then acquired by Metsera in 2023, and the upfront cash was very modest, a few tens of millions of dollars. This wasn't a large cash-heavy exit in the conventional sense. What it did do was to enhance our long-term economic exposure. The majority of those acquisition proceeds were in the form of milestone payments and royalty streams that layered on top of the existing economics from when we originally licensed the IP into Zihipp. Now we get to the year just gone. In January 2025, Metsera floated on Nasdaq. They raised about $275 million, valuing the company at just under $2 billion. This gave them the additional firepower to then be able to progress the compounds into the clinic.
You might remember in September, less than eight months later, Pfizer announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire the company for up to $7 billion, including just under $5 billion in cash up front. Following a competitive bidding war with Novo, the deal was eventually finalized in November 2025 for a significantly higher value of up to $10 billion. Now for IP Group shareholders, the relevance of this, I guess, is sort of twofold really. First, we now have exposure to a long-dated royalty interest that's being developed by one of the world's best-resourced pharma companies and is linked to one of the most significant pharma markets of the coming decades. You can see from this slide, our milestones extend out into the 2030s, and the patent life actually runs out into the 2040s.
Our IP is comprehensive and covers the lead program, which is now in phase three, and market approval is targeted for 2028. Secondly, we have recognized a fair value of GBP 128 million for that interest at year-end. That reflects the discounted value of future royalty and milestone income, and that creates really meaningful potential for future value while obviously recognizing the risks that remain. We don't have any future development costs that we have to bear, so our risk profile is asymmetric, and DB will cover the financial modeling behind this and show you the methodology that we have taken. I guess one final point to make on this asset, Pfizer's own public commentary makes it very clear that their ambition extends well beyond the assumptions that we've used in our modeling. Our valuation is a fair value approach.
We've used standard probabilities of success, as Dave will talk about, and average peak sales forecasts. I think the key message to take away is that the current value reflects an appropriate fair value today, but there's a really wide distribution of outcomes and potential for the long-term value to be materially higher if clinical, regulatory, and commercial milestones are achieved, and higher still if the market size and share is anything like Pfizer's stated ambitions. Stepping back to the wider portfolio, the examples on this slide are meant really to convey momentum rather than detail. Across health tech, clean tech, deep tech, a growing number of our more significant holdings are now demonstrating that combination of technical progress, commercial traction, and external valuation that can typically signal a step change in maturity and hopefully value potential.
In health tech and in therapeutics, several companies are moving beyond that early scientific risk stage and into a phase where progress can be more significantly underwritten by significant third-party capital. The Pfizer Metsera transaction is an obvious example of this, but it's not an isolated case. Across the portfolio, the majority of our therapeutics assets continue to increase, with multiple companies now approaching meaningful and hopefully catalytic clinical readouts over the next 12-24 months. There's a summary of all of those in the appendix as usual. In deep tech and clean tech, there's a similar pattern. Businesses such as Oxa are moving from proof of concept into scale pilots, customer deployments, and long-term commercial partnerships. This shift materially reduces execution risk and broadens the range of credible outcomes over time in a way that we recognize from previous successes like Featurespace.
Hopefully another common theme that you'll see is the quality of the funding syndicates forming around these companies. During 2025, our portfolio companies raised over GBP 900 million of third-party capital. That was about 17% up year-on-year. There was participation from high-caliber global investors, strategic partners, specialist growth funds, and long-term institutional capital. A good example of that is Artios' recent GBP 115 million funding round, and that was co-led by RA Capital and SV Health. I'm not going to go into detail here. Mark will expand on these shortly.
Taken together, this progress gives us confidence that the portfolio is moving in the right direction and that the conditions are increasingly in place for value to be converted into cash over time. Capital allocation remains a central discipline for us, and we used our strong performance on cash exits in 2024 and 2025 to accelerate our cash returns during 2025. As a reminder of our policy, we use a proportion of all realizations to reinvest into growing the value of our portfolio and a portion to supplement capital growth for shareholders with cash returns. Where our shares are trading at a material discount to NAV, and specifically where that's above 20%, buybacks are the tool which offers the most immediately accretive use of capital for our continuing shareholders. Secondly, the balance of reinvestment versus cash returns depends on various factors.
Very mindful of the continuing deep discounts at which our shares traded relative to NAV per share and also our strong liquidity position, in full year 2025, we allocated 50% of our cash exits towards buybacks, which meant we completed a GBP 45 million program during the year, retiring almost 10% of our share capital at around a 50% discount to NAV. Then looking forward, we have around GBP 30 million of cash from exits that is available for the next program, giving us flexibility to continue executing that policy while also supporting our highest conviction opportunities in the portfolio. As we said in the release, the board expects to update on timing of the commencement of their 2026 program in due course. Looking forward, our investment case for that future capital investment is summarized in three parts.
First, significant value potential in U.K. science and tech. Second, we're well-positioned to exploit this, partly because we helped to shape this industry and sit across the whole pathway from early sourcing, late-stage support and scale-up capital. That combination is difficult to replicate and becomes more valuable, particularly when capital is scarce or markets are volatile. I think in terms of today's market narrative, the reason we feel well-positioned is that we have limited exposure to that application layer SaaS and meaningful exposure to deep tech, clean tech, life sciences, those parts of the economy where AI increases demand for things like next-generation compute, resilient energy production and transfer, advanced materials rather than software.
This together creates an attractive shareholder opportunity, partly because of the returns that we believe can be delivered from the portfolio itself, and even more so when the share price trades at a discount to NAV, and we can retire shares through buybacks. On that point of significant value potential in the U.K. science and technology, I think you know, the broader context is getting increasingly compelling. As we've said many times before, and as many of you will know, the starting point is that the U.K. really isn't short of innovation. I mean, by most objective measures, we are an innovation superpower. We produce more scientific papers per capita than any other country, and we have a venture ecosystem that's ranked second globally. The interesting thing is that global investors clearly recognize the quality of what's being created here.
More than 85% of mid-stage venture rounds involve overseas capital. I would say capital, particularly from domestic sources, remains the missing ingredient. Sentiment has improved, and policy initiatives such as Mansion House and Sterling 20 point to a positive direction of travel. The scale of capital actually flowing does remain modest relative to the opportunity. In fact, the U.S. invests nearly double the percentage of GDP into VC compared to the U.K. The consequence of that is quite material. Without sufficient domestic capital, often companies are forced to exit early, and often that's to international buyers. Some modeling suggests that when a high-growth U.K. company becomes majority U.S.-owned, or indeed any other country, the U.K. can lose almost $5 billion of economic value over time. That's lost capital growth, tax revenues, broader economic activity, et cetera.
The good news is the opportunity is equally clear. For a small relative increase in allocations from U.K. asset owners into domestic ventures, that could have a really outsized impact. I'm pleased to be able to say that this year, we could update that we are now working with Aberdeen to build a portfolio of growth- stage investments for DC savers. If we can address all this comprehensively and urgently, this is an opportunity that can genuinely transform the U.K.'s competitive advantage into tangible economic value and make great results for our shareholders and investors. This obviously is exactly where IP Group sits. We operate at the intersection of world-class science, patient capital and disciplined execution.
Our role is to help convert the U.K.'s structural advantage in innovation into durable financial and social returns and do that in a way that aligns the interests of founders, institutions and of course, long-term shareholders. As a reminder, at the earliest stages, Parkwalk's EIS Fund, our specialist subsidiary fund manager, working with leading universities, provides a pipeline of new opportunities. That pipeline feeds into our balance sheet as companies mature and require follow-on capital. At later stages, we've been managing, as you will know, private capital for Hostplus, one of the largest Australian superannuation funds for the past seven years. As I mentioned, we're very pleased to be working with Aberdeen, and hopefully that is an important step in broadening access to U.K. innovation for long-term savers and strengthening the capital base behind the portfolio.
With that context on the model and this year's headline outcomes, I will now hand over to Mark, who will take you through portfolio progress and where we see future value opportunity across our balance sheet holdings.
Thank you, Greg. Good morning, everybody. Greg, can you confirm that I can be heard?
Hi, Mark. We can hear you.
Yes, Mark, got you.
You're on. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Yes. I will start by just reminding you of the most material positions in the portfolio. This is a wagon wheel showing the portfolio holdings that make up the larger proportion of the top end of the portfolio. First of all, there is that Pfizer holding now that we, or Pfizer-related holding, that we have the rights to share in the royalties from that drug that Greg talked quite a lot about at the beginning of this presentation. That's now our largest asset on the books.
I won't talk any more about that because Greg's already given quite a lot of detail other than to say it's a great validation of this sort of broad exposure to U.K. innovation, giving you this opportunity to pick these, to gain access to these outliers that can suddenly have a lot of value. That's certainly what's happened here, which is really great news. The second largest holding remains Oxford Nanopore in the portfolio. That company had another very good year in 2025. They released their annual results, which cited over GBP 220 million of revenue now. That was about 24% growth since the previous year. I'll make the same point that I made at our half year results to highlight the fact that we're seeing really impressive growth in the applied domains. This is not just a research tool.
Their clinical market sector grew by nearly 60% in 2025, which is really encouraging news that we're now seeing this tool being used in those settings. A new CEO has just joined, so we're very excited to work with him and to see the success and further growth that he's going to deliver. The third largest holding in the portfolio is Istesso. Istesso, of course, we've communicated to you before they had this setback that they didn't hit the primary endpoint of their phase II trial. The positive from that, as I talked about in our last presentation, is that they learned an awful lot from that trial. There was a lot of data came out of that that informed us about the drug and its efficacy.
What they've spent a lot of time in 2025 doing further analysis of that clinical trial data. They've discovered that it showed sort of bone protective effects and signs of muscle protection, which is really exciting that that supports the use of their drug, leramistat, in conditions linked to aging and physical decline when there are not many treatment options in that domain at the moment. That's really exciting. We look forward to seeing the next developments with that company. It was definitely a setback rather than a sort of a complete roadblock that they encountered. We've learned an awful lot from that setback. Next asset by value is Hysata. We have a GBP 76 million exposure to Hysata. You may recall this is our hydrogen electrolyzer company.
They have this hydrogen electrolyzer that is 95% efficient, which is very substantially more efficient than the sort of state-of-the-art hydrogen electrolyzer that you can buy on the market today. That company continues to progress. They're progressing towards commercial scale manufacturing. They have been building larger scale versions of their device in their facilities in Australia. We're getting good results over those systems and overcoming the challenges of plumbing all of those cells together in that device and also starting to build them on customer premises as well, which is a really exciting development. We're pleased with the progress of that company. We've got Mission as our next largest holding, which, it raised money in 2025, raised $13 million, which will be deployed to keep on developing its lead drug, which is a Parkinson's disease treatment.
We're expecting that upcoming study to start in the first half of this year, as in around now, and complete by 2027, the end of 2027 at the very latest. We'll keep a watching brief on that company. Very exciting potential in their drug. Finally, we have Monolith on here. I'll talk about Monolith in a moment, which, of course, we sold during 2025. This remaining holding represents our exposure to the earn-out on that asset. Before I come on to Monolith, I wanted to just mention the other very exciting thing that happened in 2025 is that we finally ended our journey with Hinge Health, which was an extraordinary success. Hinge Health, you may recall, we were the first institutional investor in the company that became Hinge Health.
This was an energetic young entrepreneur at the University of Oxford who came into our offices and told us that he was going to make us all rich. I think that he can say that he was on to something when he said that because it has been a great success for us. That company went on to base itself in Silicon Valley and raised a lot of money from the sort of top tier venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. In 2025 had a very successful IPO and that price remained strong after the IPO. Our task was to manage our exit from that asset. We did that carefully over the course of the last several months. We've delivered this GBP 46 million of proceeds with an IRR of 50%. Then coming back to Monolith.
Monolith was an AI company that spun out of Imperial College London. They use AI to analyze engineering data, and they were particularly applying that in the automotive industry to optimize automotive batteries. You get these sorts of slight variations as a result of material variations across the different cells of automotive batteries, and if you can learn all of the behaviors of those batteries, you can address them and control them in a specific way that's tailored to the individual behavior of the cell. That can enhance the life of the battery, which turned out to be a very powerful, impactful thing for automotive battery manufacturers. Monolith were doing well and were growing and were securing customers.
A company called CoreWeave, which is a U.S. entity that you may well have heard of, a large, listed entity in the U.S., decided that this would be a very valuable thing for them to add to their stable, and so they acquired Monolith. As you can see, another great result for IP Group there where we got a 70% IRR on that investment. This is another investment managed by my colleague, Jon Edington, who was the chap who invested in and oversaw Featurespace. He also did Garrison Technology, both of which we sold in 2024. Another great success from Jon, and many congratulations to him and all of our gratitude for that excellent work.
Picking up some of the other highlights that Greg's briefly mentioned already. We've got Artios that in the portfolio that has raised an oversubscribed $115 million funding round very recently. That was announced recently. They are developing these drugs that exploit the weakness in how cancer cells repair their own DNA. If you interrupt the ability of a cancer cell to repair its DNA, then that cancer cell won't survive. They have shown in their early clinical trials tumor shrinkage in around 50% of patients in early trials was extremely exciting that they're actually seeing tumor shrinkage. This funding enables an expansion of those cohorts in particularly in the areas of pancreatic and colorectal cancers.
They also have a second drug that they're working on that targets cancers that have a gene mutation that's common in breast and ovarian cancers. We'll also be funding clinical trials in those areas as well. In the middle of this slide is Oxa. This is our autonomous vehicle company that's focused its strategy entirely now on off-road applications. Ports and airports and other areas where there are autonomous vehicles that are not on road, which we think is an outstanding opportunity in terms of size, but in terms of the specialization that Oxa can deliver in this area, they have a really sort of compelling differentiation ability to differentiate themselves in that market.
I won't claim that 2025 was an entirely rosy period for this company. They did have some challenges in access to capital. It was a challenging period to raise money, and it took us time to close that round, and you'll see that the round was done at a lower price than the previous round, which is frustrating, but there's still a huge sort of upside potential in this company. We really think it has the potential to be a genre-defining company with some of the best talent in the U.K. and really sort of globally leading position in terms of its capability of its products. That company has now raised $103 million in a Series D. It's fantastic to have gotten that closed.
We're very grateful to the support of the National Wealth Fund in that transaction alongside NVIDIA, which is the venture arm of NVentures, which is the venture arm of NVIDIA. Then finally on this slide, we have Microbiotica, which is another exciting life sciences asset. They develop medicine that's based on the human gut microbiome. They're targeting the treating of immune-related diseases. They have a drug that they're developing for ulcerative colitis, which is an unpleasant condition.
They have done some early clinical trials and have just released the results of those clinical trials, which show that 63% of treated patients achieve remission versus 30% on placebo, which is fantastic news for those on the trial and for those of us hoping that this drug will be successful. Again, another really positive development in the portfolio.
Now finally, I just, it's nice in these presentations to remind you that, in addition to those sort of large and material assets at the top of the portfolio, you're also exposed to a whole stable of a large number of really exciting assets in terms of your sort of broad exposure to technology and your broad exposure to these global mega trends that need to be enabled by innovation. There's lots of examples in the portfolio. I've just picked out a handful of them on this slide. Going clockwise from the top left, you have Intrinsic, which is a next generation non-volatile semiconductor memory company, which has the potential.
It's a UCL spin out, University College London spin out, and it has the potential to enable much faster and more powerful data processing. If you have faster and more capable memory, you can process data a lot faster, which will be critical. As Greg was talking about, if we're gonna have these AI capabilities at the edge of the network, we will need this more powerful and efficient data processing so that company could be a real enabler of artificial intelligence. In the clean tech domain, we have Mantle8, who are using geological modeling and exploration techniques to identify subsurface environments where hydrogen is naturally generated. This overcomes the need to use hydrogen electrolyzers, and they're targeting accumulations that could be extracted in a way similar to how we extract natural gas today.
We're exposed to quantum technologies, of course, which is an area of great excitement at the moment. Quantum Motion is a London-based spin out of a combination of University College London and Oxford University that's developing quantum computers in silicon. It can use a lot of the kind of existing knowledge and infrastructure that we have for developing silicon in classical computers for quantum, and we think that company has a lot of potential. Watch out for news from them as that develops. Going back to the clean tech domain, we have Barocal here, who are developing refrigeration and air conditioning materials for refrigeration and air conditioning systems, which could make those systems far more efficient.
They won an award in 2025, the TERA-Award, for which they received $1 million of funding because they were sort of recognized as the best in the sector of improving these cooling technologies. Finally, we have OXCCU. I think we spoke about those at the half year, but because they had just raised a large funding round of $28 million. They have this proprietary process developed at the University of Oxford to capture CO2 and hydrogen and convert that into fuels and for airplanes, sustainable airplane fuel.
Their Series B round was a sort of who's who of the industry players that are interested in this, in developing sustainable aviation fuels, including IAG, which owns British Airways and one of the sort of global leaders in tier one supplying to the aircraft industry. Lots of sort of positive momentum in that pool of assets that sits beneath those most valuable assets that you hear about from us more often. With that, I will hand back over to David.
Great. Thank you, Mark. Hello, everybody. Yeah, this is David Baynes, CFO, sometimes referred to as DB in the course of presentation, so you know it's the same person. Lovely to be with you. I'll just quickly take you through the financial results. NAV per share greatly improved up from GBP 0.977 this time last year to GBP 1.10. That's a result of both, having an overall profit of about GBP 67 million and also the result of the share buyback program, which we've talked about. About GBP 45 million we bought back during the year, which was 91 million shares, about 9% of total cap. That contributed about GBP 0.04 to that improvement as well. NAV per share up, as we can see, 13%. Overheads down.
I'm glad to see overheads down at 15.9%. We're pleased with that. I don't know if you remember two years ago, we started a program. Costs got higher than we wanted at the end of 2024. We started 2023, I mean. We started a program of cost reduction and reduced it from about 22.1% now down to our aim was to get to about 16.5%. 15.9%, what we're pleased with. That is, to be fair, product of both reduced costs, but also achieving greater income. Parkwalk in particular had a good year and generated extra income. Finally, cash. Cash remains strong. There's a cash slide I'll go through in a minute, but it's strong.
Balance sheet, funnily enough, the balance sheet is similar to last year, at about GBP 950 million, just under GBP 1 billion. It's gone up, but then it goes down a little bit 'cause share buyback also reduces the overall size of the balance sheet, if that makes sense. Overall, it is up. You can see the movement of the portfolio there from about GBP 850 million, up just over GBP 900 million. That was GBP 71 million of investment we talked about. Exits of GBP 68 million, which we've also talked about, and I'll tie that into the cash flow in a minute. Also, these fair value gains of GBP 64 million, which are a big part of what we'll see, related to Metsera. I'll talk about that briefly now.
Now in the books, about GBP 128 million. Clearly a very interesting item for us. Firstly, as Greg's already referred to, this is an obesity drug, a diabetes and obesity drug, a GLP-1 agonist, which, you know, has become a bit of a buzzword. It's now been acquired by Pfizer, one of the biggest drug companies in the world, and will become sort of, we hope, the mainstay of a obesity franchise. To understand the reason why people are excited about this drug in short is 'cause it's very long-lasting. Traditional injections are weekly, so you have to inject weekly, quite inconvenient. This looks like it'll have a monthly clearance, so you actually only need to inject monthly.
It also has high levels of efficacy, so it seems to work as well as the current leading drugs in terms of the rate of weight loss that people are seeing. It also means 'cause of its efficacy, you can have slightly lower doses, which appears to mean less adverse side effects. In the earlier trials, phase II, I and II more people stayed on it, which is obviously good news for the patient, but also good news for the business. You can see why it's generated quite a lot of excitement. For us to value it can be a bit confusing 'cause it's gone through a number of different each different product have gone through different product code names. What I know is MET-097i has changed its name. Now it's been owned by Pfizer.
I won't talk about the code words as such. I'll actually just talk about the products. Basically, three lead products. We actually have an interest in about six different assets. That's where we own the underlying patents behind these products. The lead one is a monotherapy, meaning a single drug, GLP-1 agonist, and that's the one that's gone into a phase III clinical trial. You can see that there. That is in red, and that's the one that currently is providing the most value. That's because it's the one that's got the highest probability of success. I'll come to how we've done that in a minute. The middle drug, what they call a combination therapy, a GLP-1 agonist, an amylin, which is a combination of similar drug, but hopefully have even greater efficacy.
That is just gone into a, what they call a phase IIb trial. It's done a phase I start into phase II trial. The last, but not least, is an oral drug. Again, based on similar technology, there's an oral drug in the program, which of course, people understand could have significant, convenience benefits, going forward. That's the earliest of the three at the moment and is actually in preclinical as far as we're aware, and therefore, is the least likely to be successful. How have we valued this?
Well, effectively what we've done is we've looked at the potential market size, and we actually got hold of six analyst notes from the sector, and we dropped off the most conservative, the lowest. We dropped off the most optimistic at the top and then have taken sort of an average, a weighted average of the four analyst notes in the middle. You can then look at, we know, it's not public knowledge, but we obviously know what percentage interest we have in net sales going forward. We can obviously apply that percentage. We can then for each of the key leading programs there, you can then apply the probability of them being successful. Now, this stuff comes from sort of established tables, probability of success, POS, they're referred to.
At the moment, on a statistical average, the lead program, the one that's now in a phase III trial, that monotherapy, has about a 53% chance of being successful just by historical reference. A drug that's moving from sort of phase I to II, it's got 25%. The final one, starting clinical trials, you've got 10%. In effect, we then just apply those percentages to the potential value. That's the market size multiplied by our share and then multiplied by that percentage. Last, and perhaps not least, you then discount it. If these drugs are successful, they'll be paying sort of royalty streams, probably starting in a very small way in 2028, but mounting up the mid-2030s, you know, it'll be their peak sales, hopefully.
Then still have some sales, sort of mid-40s as well, so 44 onto 44. You discount all those. I think we use 11.5%. That's disclosed in the back of the document. You then discount it, and then you get a value. Despite doing all that, the value we end up with is today about GBP 128 million. That's today's value. The reason it's still such a big number is it's such a very sizable market. The sort of numbers we're using suggest the market is about GBP 100 billion, of which Pfizer might get about 10%.
Greg's already referred to it earlier, but actually, from their own presentation, they seem to think it might be a bigger market, like GBP 150 million, and they have actually suggested they might get more than 10%. I think overall, we feel we're fairly being sensible, and quite importantly, we've obviously had two independent firms of auditors, both an external firm looking at our valuation process, and then also our auditors signing off on it. I think overall, it's a realistic estimate of what the current value, potential value of these drugs are.
What will happen is, and it is an if, of course, if these progress successfully, then, as they move through, say, for example, if that lead program in 2027 is successful and has a successful phase III clinical trial, that probability will go up, and therefore the value will go up. That'll be the same for all the other programs. It can, of course, work the other way. If all goes according to plan, you will slowly and steadily see the value of that set increase. If there's a setback, then you won't. It depends what it is. It might be. There's definitely no certainty that all three will make it to market.
It is fair to say that any one of the three has significant value, very significant value compared to our current market cap, it's probably fair to say. Moving on to more sort of traditional stuff I've been talking about, when we just talk about our results. We always talk about this slide, and we have details in the pack, we talk about it. In the past, there's been some concern about the fact we have a relatively large portfolio. It's about GBP 84 million, 84 companies, sorry, on our balance sheet, and people are often worried about their need for funding. We always just lay out the funding, and it used to be sort of 1/3, 1/3.
It's changed slightly this year, but about 25% of our portfolio is effectively funded, and then 22% will fund this year, just near 30% next, and about 25% the year after. As always, it's a fairly sort of familiar pattern. They don't all come up for funding at the same time. There's a decent chunk that are all fully funded, and we do find that we manage to obviously fund these companies going forward. You always say, don't they, follow the money if you want to understand a company. We're worth just showing a bit of a cash flow. Our cash has gone from GBP 285 million to GBP 211 million. We've already mentioned pretty much all these numbers. We invested GBP 70 million, obviously outflow. We realized GBP 68 million, an inflow.
The share repurchase, as I explained, obviously is using up our cash, has gone out. You know, I've already talked about the size of the overheads. The other movements, working capital, et cetera, are relatively small. That's how the cash has moved. It's still a good, strong cash balance. Puts us in a good position both for supporting the portfolio in the next year and also, as Greg referred, to start another share buyback program when we think the time is right. I've talked a bit about overheads already, down about 20%. We're pleased with that, at that level I explained. Obviously, we'll keep a focus on that.
They will naturally increase a little bit due to pressures of inflation, but we are clearly focused on costs and are keen to keep that kind of net overhead ratio, sort of 1.6% of our total portfolio sort of where it is. With that, I'll hand back to Greg.
Thanks, DB. Before we go into questions, quickly step back and summarize the year and what it means for shareholders. 2025 was a year of tangible progress. We delivered that positive NAV per share growth. We generated strong cash exits, and we recognized long-term value through our Pfizer obesity royalty interest. In fact, I should have moved the slide on before summarizing that. You can see that that's the case. I think, you know, as I said at the start, it's definitely worth acknowledging this is a portfolio of venture-like returns. Results are often shaped by a small number of large events, and as I said, last year, 2024, that was Featurespace, and this year it was the Pfizer obesity royalty interest after they bought Metsera following their IPO.
The point I think you take away is that it's not the individual event, but the pattern. As the portfolio matures, we're hopefully increasingly seeing these long-held scientific value companies converting into financial outcomes. As Dave said, the royalty interest is a sensible risk-adjusted assumption-based fair value. It captures what we can see today and what the market can see today, and not necessarily what we hope for tomorrow. That future value will be delivered according to clinical, regulatory, and commercial milestones over time. We as shareholders will participate in that upside hopefully over the future and obviously mindful of the downside risks.
This slide will hopefully look very familiar because it's the same set of priorities that I outlined literally this time last year and also at the half year results. I just felt it was good form to report back on delivery. The first point, that priority for the year was positive NAV per share performance and delivering against it NAV up 13% was very pleasing. Second, on that access to private scale up capital, you know, we've definitely strengthened our position here and that relationship with Aberdeen is hopefully the first signs of capital in the U.K. starting to flow.
Third, on cash exits, we made good progress against that ambition, that target, generating GBP 68 million, and that enabled us to do buybacks and invest in the maturing businesses in the portfolio. On pipeline growth, we continue to be the most active investor into university spin outs in the U.K., predominantly through our Parkwalk managed funds. 2026, the priorities look pretty similar, and that's intentional. We definitely intend to continue delivering positive NAV per share performance, maintaining a high bar for capital deployment into the portfolio and ensuring that we have balance sheet flexibility. That discipline worked well in full year 2025, and it is the right discipline to take into 2026.
From the private capital side, a key step forward will be making the first investments from our new scale up vehicle with Aberdeen, alongside announcing at least one further private capital partnership. We'll also continue to execute against that ambition of cash exits through to the end of 2027, maintaining that shareholder focus capital allocation policy. That means, you know, reinvesting in the portfolio where returns are compelling and buying back shares where the discount makes better use of capital. I think the message is simple. We're not changing course. We are building on what has been shown to work over the last 12 months. I'll just reflect finally on the platform. This year marks our 25th anniversary. Over that period as a group, we've invested about GBP 1.7 billion.
That's across the balance sheet and the private capital that we manage. We've helped to form and support more than 600 companies, many as the first investor, and forming businesses, as you heard with Zihipp. That's led to the creation of over 15,000 jobs that we can identify. This reflects a consistent commitment to this sort of patient science-led investing approach and building an organization with capabilities that can support companies from spin out through to global scale. I think what excites me and the management team is that the next phase of that journey could be even more impactful. The portfolio is maturing, the routes to liquidity, as we've said with the GBP 250 million realization target are clearer, and I think that strategic and institutional interest in U.K. science and tech is increasing.
We've sharpened and became a more focused business, and particularly over the last couple of years, refined that investment strategy, taking our learnings from that last 25 years. As Dave said, we're more disciplined on costs. We're deliberate in our capital allocation. I think we're increasingly recognized as a bridge from science to global scale. As we look forward into the future, the ambition is straightforward. We continue converting that world-class science into financial outcomes while playing a meaningful role in shaping a healthier and more sustainable and hopefully a more productive future. Thank you, shareholders, for your continued support, and we'll be very happy to now take some questions. We have a few.
We do.
Um-
Jake, if that's all right, I think you were going to say something.
Yeah, absolutely, guys. If I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that have been submitted already, just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. David, sir, if I may now just hand over to you to chair the Q&A with the team, and if I pick up from you at the end, that'd be great. Thank you very much.
Cool. Thanks, Jake. With pleasure. Yeah, I think I can mentally prepare you all. What have we got here? 25 questions at the moment. Look, as we always say at this stage, we will try and endeavor to answer all the ones we can. We quite understand not all of you will be able to stay on. We will, I apologize, we will overrun the hour invariably. We often find this can take half an hour to answer all the questions. Obviously, that's only for those that want to participate. Anyway, I'll dive straight in. Mark, you know it's coming your way. I think the first one is probably to you.
This is from a David B. We have another one. "Hello, p lease, can you give some commentary on the market background for hydrogen, given the Bramble administration?" Can you just briefly comment on that, Mark?
Yeah, that was a sad outcome with Bramble because we think they have got really compelling technology and their customers were excited by it as well. That was a symptom of sort of an absence of sufficient co-investment capital. They had difficulty raising money. I think that highlights how sort of capital intensity, higher interest rates and pressures on the sort of the availability of capital for these early-stage hydrogen businesses is a challenge for them. I think the whole sector is still in this sort of build out phase, it remains infrastructure heavy. You've got these long timelines to scale up production of hydrogen and distribution to ramp up end user adoption.
You're seeing sort of well-capitalized players that have got differentiated technology continue to attract funding. It is sort of challenging for some of these smaller players. I think the policy support still is robust. Governments in the U.K. and across Europe and globally are seeing hydrogen as critical to address these hard to abate sectors. Clearly cost reduction remains the key to sort of unlock this, and that's why we're excited about Hysata with their much more efficient electrolyzer. If you can make the economics that much more compelling, then we see that as an opportunity to sort of overcome these challenges in terms of the availability of capital in the short term.
Our approach therefore remains just focused on these sort of differentiated, capital-efficient businesses that are innovating in the space.
Thanks, Mark. Appreciate that. Again, a second question from David B. Probably I've covered most of this, I think. Says, "Hello. On the net zero potential royalty , I can see all of the inputs in the DCF, but do you consider this combines into a sensible valuation?" In short, yes, I do. I've spent quite a time talking to you all about it. Hopefully, you can see why. We have tried to take both sensible probability of success numbers. We've also tried to discount appropriately. I think we've been entirely realistic, actually. In fact, funny enough, if you look at the amount that Pfizer paid for the drug of about $10 billion, that would suggest that actually our valuation is sensible given the kind of the amount that we would own of that ultimate product.
I think we do feel comfortable. I think also the sort of market sizes that Greg referred to at the beginning, which obviously Pfizer themselves have referred to, we suggested our numbers possibly slightly conservative against that measure. Yes, we do feel comfortable. Next question. I'm gonna give this to Greg 'cause it's a tougher one. A tougher but fair one, to be fair. When are we actually gonna make a return on our investment? It's great the NAV increasing, but the share price remains appalling. Don't know if you'd like to comment on that.
Yeah. Thanks, Keith, and share your frustration with the share price. I mean, I think some of the actions we've taken during 2025 and indeed 2024 with the cost reductions, et cetera, and the priorities around delivering cash returns and then using a proportion of those proceeds to buy back stock is all part of us trying to narrow that discount. It does. You're absolutely right. It remains very frustrating. Frustrating for me as a shareholder. It's clearly something that we're trying to address. The share price had performed reasonably well up until the recent geopolitical tensions that we saw in the Middle East from a low of 35-38 in about this time last year.
We were making some good progress on that front. Hopefully, a confident set of results and line of sight on future value will reverse that back to positive territory. I agree. It is very frustrating, and we're trying to take all the practical steps that we can to realize value and close that gap.
Thank you. Yes. I'm gonna pass this your way as well, Greg.
Mm-hmm.
Nigel M., thank you for your question. Congratulations on an excellent set of results. At GBP 0.53, if the discount on NAV is well over 50% now, please indicate that you will engage in another large-scale buyback to narrow the gap. I know you've already commented on this, but you may as well, I guess, confirm that.
Yeah. We haven't put a specific date on the buyback start today. I can say the board remains very committed to the policy and to using buybacks as that primary mechanism for returning capital while the discount to NAV remains elevated. We also mentioned that we've sort of accumulated about GBP 30 million worth, part of which is half of the realizations from 2025, and part of which it reflects the fact that we've made some realizations already in 2026. We will update on that timing in due course.
Thank you. Another one I'll pass to you. This is from Malcolm R. "Might there not be more scope for returns from an expanded IP pipeline, I guess investment, rather than from just buybacks?" If you or Mark might want to comment.
Yeah. I mean, it's a great question, and maybe there's another question a little bit further on that I think is quite similar. Hang on. Let me just quickly find it. There's another question from Akshay that I think is probably worth maybe the other side of that argument sort of thing. So, Akshay, thanks for the question.
Just to read it out, "So, like to connect three themes you touched on. First, the U.K.'s undeniable strength in innovation and scientific capability. Second, persistent challenges U.K. companies face. Third, our own shares trading at a discount. Is there a common thread here, a gap between scientific excellence and commercial common sense, both at a national level and within our company, within IP Group? More specifically, how should investors think about your decision to allocate incremental capital to new projects when the market is effectively valuing your existing assets at a greater than 50% discount to NAV? What's the hurdle or rationale that makes that capital allocation compelling relative to buying back your own shares?"
I think that's the sort of–
Yeah
The other side of that same question about should we be investing more. I mean, I think it's a very thoughtful way of connecting those themes, and I definitely agree there's a common thread. I'd describe it a little bit differently. The U.K.'s challenge isn't so much scientific excellence. We are really world-class at that, and it's more about translating that excellence into scaled commercial outcomes. Too often that capital is sort of unavailable at the right moment, or it's applied with a short-term lens that doesn't fit that kind of long-term science. What we're trying to do is sit at that juncture and apply that commercial judgment and price risk properly, be patient where we need to be, but also be disciplined about capital allocation where that's not.
We're obviously doing that on the balance sheet. When the shares trade at a big discount to NAV, obviously we're gonna be using buybacks, and you've seen us act pretty decisively on that this year. We've all retired almost 10% of the company's shares in issue last year. That means, you know, as shareholders, you should take away that buybacks set a very high hurdle. Obviously when we've got a big discount like that, it's equivalent to almost like acquiring the existing portfolio at half price. Any new investment has to be demonstrably better than that. I think a good way of maybe describing that, of roughly GBP 70 million we invested from the balance sheet last year, more than 90% went into existing holdings. Only about GBP 5 million went into brand-new opportunities.
It's a very small amount of capital going to new projects. In practice, we are investing incremental capital where it can unlock disproportionate value. That could be protecting our position against a diluted financing round. It could be accelerating a company through, you know, an inflection point, or it could be crowding in high-quality third-party capital like we did with Oxa. If opportunities don't clear that, then they don't get funded. I guess there's a hierarchy between investing in buybacks and only investments that clear the hurdle are pursued. That's, I guess that's sort of how we think about capital allocation.
Yeah. A comprehensive answer, and also saves me a very long question, so thank you for that. Malcolm R., the second question, which I'll read out. It's more of a statement. "Great presentation." Thank you for that, Malcolm. I'll make a point of reading that one out. I appreciate it very much. Hiran A., I'll ask this. "What was the average sales price for Hinge?" The average price was $47.3, if you're interested. Total investment in that was about GBP 870, 000, and we took out $46 million. I think it's about 53x our money. You don't get them every day of the week, so nice to have it, when we got it. Moving on down to question eleven, which I've myself not pre-read. James W.
"You obviously still like Oxa and Oxford Nanopore and would be reluctant to sell it, but given your own discount, have you considered spinning out the holding to shareholders so they can make their own decisions on whether they want to own it? You might argue that smaller holders might find it inconvenient, but I'm sure it would be outweighed by the higher value created." I'll probably pop that to you, Greg.
Yeah, no. It's a very fair question. Thank you. It's definitely not one we dismiss lightly. I think and guess, as always, when we've got a valuable and quoted holding and our own shares trade at a discount to NAV, things like spin-outs or distributions are something that we consider as a board all the time. We have looked at this a lot in terms of the mechanism to do so efficiently to shareholders and that there is no efficient, like, tax-efficient mechanism to do it. If we do something which works for institutions, which are about 80% of our shareholder base, then it has a negative impact on individuals because often it is done as a dividend and so therefore carries quite a lot of tax.
Similarly, if we were to do it in that form, it doesn't necessarily work for institutions. I think what you should expect to see is, like we have done with Hinge, we traded out of that over a relatively short period of time. I think the runway for Nanopore is longer, given the stage the company's at versus the valuation that it's at versus its current trading. Got a new CEO in place. But I think you should expect to see that capital discipline and routine exits from that company become a feature over the near term.
Thank you. Next question from Kane, which I suspect is our favorite South African analyst. Thanks for being here, Kane. I'll give it to you again, Greg. "When is the next clinical catalyst for Istesso?
Yeah. We put in the back of the presentation, as usual, that summary of our clinical-stage companies. In fact, I think I can probably do this. Let's just skip through so people know what I'm talking about. You can refer to this again on the website. This shows the clinical-stage portfolio, the various holdings that we've got. You can see Metsera in there. You can see Istesso. The next announcement we're anticipating will be the formal start or the first dosing of patients in that phase II trial, which Mark mentioned, is the follow-on to the phase II-B that they did. That will be an investigational study that will read out in 2027.
I'm actually anticipating quite a bit of news flow from the company this year on some preclinical data and other things, and could be quite an exciting year in terms of some of the adding some clinical weight to those interesting factors about the development compounds that Mark mentioned, things like impact on muscle and impact on other bits of the body. Yeah, there should be some good news flow from Istesso this year.
Thank you. Ian R. This is one for you, Mark, actually. "Are you seeing the volume of new AI investment opportunities possibly crowding out more mainstream investments in terms of both funds, talented staff, and investor time?"
Thanks. Yeah, it's a good question. It's certainly true that AI is attracting a disproportionate share of attention and capital at the moment. I don't necessarily see it as sort of crowding out other areas. It's reallocating focus towards a certain technology. I think there's clearly a concentration of capital into AI, particularly infrastructure and foundation model layer. Many of the problems that AI is addressing, like compute efficiency, processing, automation, are linked to our existing themes. It's not a separate vertical for us. AI cuts across deep tech, across clean tech, and across life sciences, so it's often complementary rather than competing. Some of the most compelling opportunities sit at that intersection of AI and other sectors.
If anything, it kind of creates these periods of intense focus in certain parts of the market can create better entry points elsewhere and opportunities for us where high-quality companies are receiving less attention. It's kind of clearly a major theme for us. We're allocating our resource accordingly, but our approach remains unchanged, that we back differentiated science and strong teams where we can see pathways to value creation, whether that sits within AI or enabling it or enabled by it.
Thank you. Sam, also another analyst following us, a health analyst. Good to have you there, Sam. Thank you. I'll give it to you, Greg, going first. "Would your preference be to hold the net zero license through to commercialization or look to sell it at some stage to a pharmaceutical royalty buyer, perhaps?"
Well, yeah. Great question, Sam. I guess the starting point is we're very fortunate to have a choice, and I guess that's sort of valuable in its own right. The licenses give us exposure to hopefully long-dated, high-quality royalty streams on assets now being developed by one of the world's best-resourced pharma companies. We're not under any pressure to sell or fund development or take binary risk. That's very attractive. In principle, we are open to both paths. Holding through to commercialization could deliver really attractive long-term cash flows with no capital requirement from us.
Equally, as you probably are alluding to, there's a well-established market for high-quality pharma royalties, and at the right point and at the right price, we could look to monetize some or all of that right. For us, it will definitely come down to comparative value. Does it, you know, will it be better for us to crystallize value today at a better price, given the discounts now, et cetera, et cetera, create a better outcome for shareholders, or is it better to hold it? We are, as you'd probably expect, exploring that actively. Yeah, 'cause it's definitely a nice position to be in to have the choice.
It is. Sorry if you heard that brief interruption there. That was a conference going on in the background. I apologize. A question from Keith D. "Are you saying there's a 47% chance of losing GBP 100 million on the obesity drug?" Well, Keith, perhaps there's some truth in that. Not quite that much. It is saying there's a 47% chance that actually that lead program won't be successful, and that's in the, like I said, in the sort of GBP 70 million rather than 100. That is true. If that fails, then yeah, you would have a downside. I think it is worth making the point that there are three programs, so just 'cause that one fails, it doesn't mean that actually they've all failed.
Actually, the chance of everything failing is lower than that actually. It's more like about 30% in our numbers anyway. However, generally, obviously, I'm on the finance side. However, I think it is reasonable to say that there's quite a lot of confidence in this drug. Obviously, Pfizer have paid $10 billion for it. It's a drug that obviously, they're fairly common GLP-1 drugs. Obviously, they've been used widely, so there's quite a lot of data on it. The clinical trials to date have been relatively sizable. I think it's quite unlikely you get a very serious adverse effect on one of these trials in this remaining phase III trial.
Statistically, I think rightly, we've based it on the statistics, the probabilities of successes of a drug at this stage, you have got a 47% chance of that lead program not working. I hope that makes sense. I think generally, we and obviously Pfizer feel more confident about that. Then you do have to take into account there's a whole load of other programs. That doesn't mean that it all fails. It is absolutely right to identify that these drugs are not yet in the market, and there is a possibility of them not making it. Certainly, what we'll hopefully see is over the next one or two years in particular, that lead program goes through a phase three and hopefully reads out in 2027.
We'll start getting, you know, more and more confidence, and you'll hopefully see the value going up. I'm just having to go back. It jumped on me. Right. Next question from Robin M. "When do we get the next news on PF'3944-II, which is the lead program? When will full phase III trial be concluded?" I think as I just said, Robin, without realizing I was answering the next question, at the moment, that looks like it's gonna start reading out in 2027. It's actually Pfizer obviously being a extremely well-heeled organization, haven't just taken this into a single phase III trial. They're planning on 10 phase III trials. They're committing very serious money to this. The first trials, we've been told, have started this year.
We would expect some readout on some, if not all, of those trials during the course of next year. This is probably one for you, Greg, from Sam again. "Could you provide some more color on the Aberdeen partnership you announced post-period end, and what benefits the tie-up bring?"
Yes. Yeah, very happy to expand on that to the extent that I can at this stage. I guess it's a good example of that strategy we've been talking about using us as a bridge between the U.K.'s innovation base and hopefully these large pools of long-term U.K. institutional capital. In practical terms, we're working with them to create a U.K. venture portfolio built from our science-led ecosystem, bringing long-term institutional capital in alongside our balance sheet. For shareholders, the benefits are threefold. One, it scales our capital without increasing the balance sheet risk, particularly mindful of that earlier comment and discussion around the buybacks versus investment in the portfolio. The second is that it provides a credible route for later stage and secondary funding into the portfolio.
Third, it reinforces hopefully our position as a, you know, an institutional grade platform. We're trying to design these things to be repeatable and scalable and hopefully directly address that structural funding gap in the U.K. Hopefully we can add some real value there. I can't give numbers on quantum, et cetera, but obviously, we'll do so as the partnership scales.
Thank you. I think, hopefully Robin M., your next question, you will feel we've just answered that. "Can you give more detail on the Aberdeen tie-up?" Okay. David B., you're back on. "Saba have been buying a significant volume of shares. Given you have large institutional holders already, Saba is unlikely to gain control. Are they content with your current strategy?"
Well, I think there's a couple of questions on that front. I think it's fair to say, look, as a listed company, I don't think it's really appropriate for us to comment on what any individual shareholder might want to do or you know, sort of give further information than what we've already disclosed. We give regular updates on holdings. You can see those also summarized at the end of February in the appendices in the back of the results. I mean, I guess like any other shareholder, we engage regularly and constructively with you know, hopefully, as you can see from these sorts of calls, that ranges from retail right the way through to institutions, and we definitely welcome that engagement.
Where we speak to any shareholder, we are trying to explain the, you know, the strategy, our capital allocation framework, our capabilities as a business. You know, we're not an investment trust, our capabilities as a business and the long-term value opportunity. Ultimately our role is to run the business in the best interest of all shareholders and deliver that NAV per share growth and disciplined capital returns over time.
Thank you. There was one other favorite question. If you don't mind, I'll treat that as wrapped up in that same answer. Now Kane back. Good to have you back. What's– Probably one for you, Mark. "What's the latest on First Light Fusion? Is there a funding round on the cards?"
Yes.
Do you wanna say anything about that?
Yes. First Light Fusion, of course, hopefully you've seen, towards the end of last year, they announced their FLARE concept, which is the world's first commercially viable reactor compatible pathway to high gain inertial fusion, as in they're the first to sort of set out a pathway using their technology to how we could actually have a nuclear reactor that is generating energy for useful purposes for public consumption.
In addition to that, just this past week there was perhaps you saw it, a large splash across the Sunday Times, showcasing the government's nuclear fusion strategy, in which it said that Britain's thriving fusion sector is to get public money to wean us off foreign energy, citing this GBP 2.5 billion figure of investment to chase the holy grail of nuclear fusion.
There are lots of kind of positive wider industry development for First Light and this FLARE concept that they published has generated a lot of excitement among those who are in the fusion industry because it potentially enables a lot of people's approaches to fusion to be enhanced and to give them a better chance of generating useful nuclear fusion. Is there a funding round? I think I don't wanna give away things that the company might not want me to give away or indeed jinx anything, but we are quite advanced with that. We have a cornerstone term sheet from a cornerstone investor. I think I'm optimistic about that coming together.
Thank you. Thanks, Mark. Actually, I'm gonna give the linked question from Russell H, which is a couple down the stack. "Do you have any preliminary thoughts on the announcement yesterday by U.K . Government as to Britain to lead fusion energy race to deliver energy security in the future?" There was a big piece in Sunday Times as well on our portfolio company, First Light. Do you wanna comment on that at all?
Good. Well, that's a lovely setup, isn't it? Nice sort of prompt to say a positive thing that, you know, clearly that puts our nuclear fusion efforts at the center of sort of sovereign capability. We're definitely seeing that at First Light. There's a lot of kind of engagement on that with the public sector. I think that's entirely positive for us and a sort of great development.
Brilliant. Thank you for that. Mark, you're still on. You're staying in the spotlight. Milos, another analyst. Milos, thanks for joining us. "Can you please give us some details on Oxa's competitive advantages from the autonomy stack versus hyperscalers, OEMs and robotic platforms?"
Yes. This is a short question with a long answer, given that you've sort of cited lots of different domains of semi-overlapping notional competitors. Not all of them are direct competitors, in fact, once you sort of you get into the detail. Oxa's building this kind of full autonomy stack, that is very deliberately focused on industrial and commercial use cases. A lot of these kind of hyperscaler efforts are oriented very differently.
They're focused on autonomy in complex urban environments, whereas Oxa's advantage is focused on these being deployable in sort of quite different environments, environmental settings that have specific needs like ports and airports, where a lot of the considerations that apply on road don't apply, but you have a whole lot of new consideration, different ones. Oxa is not just a company that is capable of building these vehicles that can operate entirely autonomously, but they can also integrate into the management systems of the ports. They can integrate. They can take in requirements for positioning of containers and of certain types of containers need to be in certain places. You can program all of that into their system.
They have a lot of intelligence around how you sort of dock these vehicles so they can be charged and how they can interact with the human control of the port. There's a lot of kind of complexity that's specific to these industrial environments that Oxa has a lot of data that these people who are doing on-road stuff don't have that gives them real differentiation. There's the kind of differentiation versus OEMs where they have a different type of objectives and they're developing for sort of existing vehicle platforms, whereas Oxa's differentiation there is that they're vehicle agnostic, and so you can apply it to whatever the cheapest vehicle you want to purchase for your particular application is.
It's sort of quite complex and involved depending on which sector you're comparing them to or which competitor you're comparing them to. This sort of full stack autonomy with the capability to be deployed on any vehicular platform is the core of the differentiation.
Thank you, Mark. You're staying on spotlight. Milos is hitting us with another one. "Can you please update us on the timelines for the commissioning of Hysata's 100-kW demonstration system and running a field trial in Saudi Arabia?"
Yeah. Look, this is going well, but the company is not keen for lots of public information to be pushed out there, so I'm very cautious about how much we do say publicly on this. I've just texted the chap who's on the board of Hysata for me and for us, and he sort of discouraged me from being too specific on any statements. The company wants to make its own announcements. Look, I'm not saying that to hide anything. It's not going badly. It is going well. They're developing well. I'd like to sort of leave it at that if that's okay.
Thank you very much. I'm gonna move on to question 28. We're getting near the end, but not quite. This is Mike T. I assume that's our Mike T. If it is, welcome, Mike.
Hey, Mike.
"Can you update on the chairman situation?"
Yes, of course. We announced last year in the AGM and the nominations report, we said we were gonna be commencing a succession process for the chair first because we've got a number of non-execs who are coming up to their full term of independence over the next couple of years. As we announced earlier this year, Sir Douglas will step down as chair at the conclusion of the AGM in June, in a few months' time. He's made a great contribution to IP Group during the last almost eight years. I'm very grateful for his support and particularly access to some of those long-term institutions here in the U.K. where he's got some really senior relationships.
It's been very grateful for that support and introductions. As you'd expect, we've got an active succession process underway. We're focused on appointing a chair that has the right blend, I would say, of capital markets, investment experience, and of course, all the usual sort of wisdom, strategic judgment, et cetera, that are appropriate for a chair. We'll update the market in due course obviously, but it's definitely progressing well, and we've got a number of really good conversations.
Brilliant. I think we've probably covered this, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Greg, QC, "can you guide a range on how large Aberdeen relationship could be? If you can, really."
I mean, that's, I guess, the only thing I'll say by way of comparison. We started with relatively small sums with Hostplus, another effectively a DC fund, a defined contribution pension fund in Australia, and that grew over time as they allocated successive amounts of capital to us. I'll give more information on that as we make sort of first investments, et cetera. That's maybe a comp you could think about.
Great. Andrew S. I'm sorry, my phone might be interrupting slightly. Hopefully it'll be all right. Andrew M. Okay, Andrew. Andrew, nice to have you with us as always. Question is, "are all the U.S. interests now held under the umbrella of North American University Innovations?" In short, yes, they are. We do have some American-listed interests, for example, like Centessa. Generally, what we used to a long time be going as kind of, IP Group U.S. is now all held underneath that one umbrella. Yes, and there's a portfolio of interesting companies, but they're relatively early stage, still in the States.
Johnny S, I think really making a point, what's which is a fair point. What's the current discount on this portfolio once you strip back cash and credit holdings? Clearly, it's bigger than the current one. I haven't actually seen the price this morning, but clearly given we're now GBP 1.10 per share, the discount is quite significant at the moment and sort of well over 50%. I'm sorry. It just jumped. See if I've got any more. I'm nearly at the end. Update on Hysata and its stack. I think we've done that, so if you don't mind. Thanks very much. Yeah. Lucas, nice to hear from you. As always, I think we're seeing you soon. I'll probably get Greg, you probably wanna comment on this one. IP Group's third largest investment in 2025 was into a biotech company called RAGE Biotech. Please, can you share some insight on your conviction to deploy capital here? Many thanks. Lucas.
Happy to pick that up. Mark, you,
Oh, yeah, either. I mean
... portfolio probably full.
Would you like me to do it?
Very happy to do it. Of course. Yeah, go on.
Yeah. Our conviction is grounded in the quality of the science and the team. It's addressing this sort of underserved biological pathway. We're not backing speculative biology. We see something that's sort of strong mechanistic rationale. The other thing that really was quite compelling was the unusually high level of sort of engagement and interest from the pharma sector and this innovation. That really sort of awakened us to the opportunity here on a scale much more so than other opportunities we see at this stage because it's quite unusual to see this level of interest in an asset at this stage of its life.
Brilliant. The last one is just to comment. Lucas, again, "great presentation, by the way." Thank you, Lucas. "I look forward to meeting you next week," and we look forward to seeing you as always when you're in the U.K. I think now that is us. I think we have 36 questions covered and exactly an hour and a half, which isn't too bad. Jake, if you're happy, we'll hand back to you to do the honors.
Perfect, guys. That's great. Thank you very much for being so generous with your time then addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this morning. Of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you immediately after the presentation has ended. 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.
Of course. Well, I hope you've got the message that full year 2025 was a year of really tangible progress for the group. We delivered that positive NAV per share growth, which was our number one priority for the year. We generated strong cash exits, which enables us to reinvest into the maturing portfolio. As I said earlier, about 93% of the money we invest in the portfolio went into existing companies as they scaled. Also, we were able to retire about 10% of our shares in issue through our buyback program. The most significant event in the year was that long-term value through our Pfizer obesity royalty interest. We look forward with confidence. We appreciate shareholders' support. I know it's frustrating the share price at times. I'm equally frustrated.
We look forward to updating everyone on progress during the course of the year. Thank you all for your time.
Perfect, Greg. 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 to provide your feedback. 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. Good morning to you all.