Parkwalk are delighted to have won the Enterprise Investment Scheme Association ‘Best EIS Exit for 2014’. The awards were presented at the House of Lords on Thursday 12th February 2015.

Parkwalk were also recognised as ‘Highly Commended’ in the Best EIS Fund Manager category.

We believe the awards reflect both the fact that our 2010/11 and 2011/12 EIS Funds have returned, in cash, more to investors than they subscribed in each fund and our investment strategy.

Returns

Parkwalk returned 6.9x (10x including tax reliefs) to investors in Tracsis plc, in three years and two days.
Parkwalk’s four exits since 2010 (two with gains, two with losses) which have returned 2.25x cost (3.36x including tax reliefs) giving an IRR of 42% (or 54% including tax reliefs).
Parkwalk’s 2010/11 EIS Fund has a NAV gain of 1.87x times (2.15x inc tax reliefs & fees) and the 2011/12 EIS Fund has a gain of 2.37x times (2.94x inc tax reliefs & fees).
Parkwalk had exited 44% of its investments which are currently over 3 years old (the minimum holding period under the EIS).

Investment Strategy

Parkwalk’s investment strategy, where we invest in university spin out companies but importantly offer investors a spread along the growth curve; from early stage to AIM-listed companies.
Improved processes and governmental encouragement have led to more commercial spin-outs, and the University of Cambridge alone now has fourteen spin-outs that are each valued at over $1bn. The University of Oxford has formed 54 spin-outs in the last 10 years, 90% of which are still in business.
Some notable spin-out successes include:

  • ARM (Cambridge) – $21bn market cap
  • Autonomy (Cambridge) – sold to HP for $10bn
  • Natural Motion (Oxford) – Feb 2014 acquired by Zynga for $527m
  • Circassia (Imperial) – floated in 2014 with $625m valuation
  • Oxford Nanopore (Oxford) – raised $220m to date, $975m valuation
  • Bluegnome (Cambridge) – acquired by Illumina for c.100x original investment level

We believe this asset class is coming to prominence with institutional investors such as Woodford, Invesco and Lansdowne investing in the sector. Parkwalk usually co-invest with other large institutional funds.

We would like to thank our investors, our investee companies, our partner Universities and the EISA for both these awards.