Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our annual results of Molten Ventures. It's really nice to have people in the room for a change. We've been doing this remotely for some time now, and it's really good to have an opportunity to present the annual results and to actually do it in person. For those on the webcast, we have a range of analysts in the room. I think the questions will be coming from the analysts in the room, and any analysts that are on the call will take questions afterwards. But what we'd like to do is just run you through the presentation. Obviously, you've seen the results. A number of you will have been able to look through them this morning. So I'll start really with, I'm not going to read the disclaimer. I'll start with a brief summary of the year. I'm very conscious that most of the people listening to this, and certainly those in the room, are very familiar with us and our model, and also will be very familiar from the interim results that we presented in November. Effectively, what we've seen now with these sets of results is, over the year, a flat year for us in Gross Portfolio Value, and coming on the back of a reasonable drop in the first half of this year. What that demonstrates in the second half is that we've seen a real stabilization of valuations. Public markets' valuations in tech have been on a bull run now for a number of years. Obviously, private markets always take a while. There's always a gap, and they take a while to catch up. So we're quite pleased that we're now beginning to start to see that stabilization in private valuations and starting to flow through in our portfolio companies. So overall, across the year, we're very pleased to be able to show a flat gross portfolio value, but we are particularly encouraged by the second half of the year, which has enabled us to make up the loss that we took in the first half. Overall, our portfolio companies are in good shape. As you will be familiar, for those of you who know our model, the vast majority, 60% of our gross portfolio value in our NAV sits within our core assets, 20 core assets. So they're the assets that really are the bellwether for how the business is performing and how the NAV is developing. Over the last year, those businesses have performed extremely well. We've talked about revenue growth, average 50% growth in the core over the year. In the environment that we've been in, coming off where we've been over the last few years, that is actually very encouraging. But for us in investing in good businesses, it's not just about businesses that are growing revenue. It's about businesses that are well run, commercially driven, but also can demonstrate that through good, strong margins. And so again, we've seen the core margins improving, consistent, above the 60% mark, which again is something that's very important to us. Private businesses, or any business that's growing revenue in a very tough environment and is being able to maintain decent margins, we believe is something that's very positive. We think it reflects the strength and the ability of our portfolio companies to be able to develop and to provide real value to the customers that they're serving. So we're very pleased with the portfolio across the board, particularly the core portfolio, but also with our third-party assets. It's been very important for us in our model to be able to deploy both balance sheet and third-party capital. We've seen some real progress in that over the last year. We've launched our Irish-focused fund with the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, and we have really built some good, solid foundations over the year for us to be able to launch additional funds and to build those third-party assets. We also, obviously, over the year, completed the fundraise at the end of last year, which we were very pleased with the response that we got. It was a very difficult time to go into the market, but I think our shareholders, we were very pleased that our shareholders supported us, oversubscribed in the fundraise. For us, really, that was a vindication of the model, but also the support that we get from our shareholders. Our shareholders were very supportive in raising that capital, which we felt at the time, and we still believe was very important for us to have that extra bit of dry powder in order to be able to take advantage of this dislocation in pricing between public and private markets. That's really what drove us to the acquisition of Forward Partners and subsequently the acquisition of the Seedcamp III portfolio. These are transactions that we know the assets well. We know how to manage those assets. We are able to take advantage of tough pricing in the market. Raising that capital last year was really important for us to be able to acquire these portfolios and obviously to be able to put the capital into them to realize their value. That's really the story of last year. I think the last thing that I would say, and this is more probably a point about where we see the environment moving forward, is that there has been a real liquidity crunch within private markets over the last couple of years that everybody's very familiar with. As a result of that, realizations, the M&A activity exits have been very hard to come by. We've been working. We've got a very diligent portfolio-driven program on exits to make sure that we exit our assets at the right time. It's not always about trying to exit the top-end marquee assets, because the reality is those will move at the time that they move. We can't really control those. It's much more about managing the whole portfolio. So we're very pleased to be able to give guidance, which we mentioned in our trading statement, that we believe that we'll see realizations in the region of GBP 100 million over this year. Really, that's not about any sudden change in the environment. It's much more about the hard work that's been put in over the last few years, slightly improving macro environment, different view of the markets on rates, and therefore M&A activity starting to pick up again. We're starting to see that flow through. We've announced already Perkbox and Endomag as two of those. We do have visibility on a number of others. And again, this is very much us just doing our normal business, which is managing the whole portfolio and realizing assets at the right time for those assets. And so that, again, I think looking forward is probably a more encouraging outlook for us. So as far as the model goes, I'm not going to spend time. We're obviously going through the presentation. I think you all understand the model. We've got a slightly different view of our model, which we're trying to build out to generate a better understanding, particularly with those that are unfamiliar with the story. We're conscious that to some people coming new to this, that our stock looks like a complicated story. It's not that complicated. It's relatively straightforward. We invest in private companies. We realize cash, and we create value. But we do understand that this model is not well known. So therefore, in this pictorial, what we're trying to do is to demonstrate the breadth of our model. I probably only will pull out one or two points here. The first one is that what we're trying to do is to build a platform, a multi-stage platform to invest in venture across the various stages through the cycle. I think that's really important for us. It's European. It's tech, but it is multi-stage. Even though we won't invest directly ourselves at the very early stage in the fund of funds in seed, we do invest in seed funds. Although we don't do pre-IPO, we still have the ability, by raising third-party capital, to be able to invest in later-stage companies as they develop. Then the core of what we do with the balance sheet, EIS, VCT. I think what we're trying to get across here is that this is a platform. This is a platform for investing in private assets across Europe. We have access to multi-stage. We believe that that's really important to get into the best assets and to stay in those best assets for as long as possible. So probably, Ben, if you just want to take us through the financial highlights. Absolutely. Pleased to be able to present our results this morning. A lot of these numbers were pre-trailed in the trading update that we put out in April. The only small adjustments to that are to the gross portfolio value, which is slightly higher than we had in that trading update at GBP 1.379 billion. That's the product of invested capital of GBP 65 million in the period. We'll come to the breakdown of that. And also, as Martin already mentioned, the cash proceeds in the year of GBP 39 million. And the net result, which includes foreign exchange movements from the first half and the second half of the year, leads us to a -1% on the gross portfolio fair value movement. So that gives you the overall headline of the gross portfolio. How that then translates down into the balance sheet is leading to GBP 1.25 billion of net assets at the end of the period. Again, the adjustments from gross portfolio down into the balance sheet take into account accrued carry value, which comes off. Then we're adding on the consolidated cash at the period end, which is GBP 57 million. That cash is recognizing the GBP 55 million net of fees that we raised during the year. Overall, that GBP 1.25 billion of net asset value, when you take into account the number of shares at the period end, 189 million, leads us to a GBP 6.62 per share NAV, which is slightly up on what we put into the trading statement just by a penny. Then the final highlight column we have here is for the income statement in the year, loss after tax, which takes into account the fair value loss that we just talked about of 1%. And then the cost base in the period is minus GBP 41 million. But if you look at the operating costs as a function of net asset value, we're still well below our targeted 1%, which is at 0.1%. That's the fees netting off against income, and that's still well below that 1% target. And overall, that leaves the group, when we take into account not just the balance sheet, but also the off-balance sheet, EIS, VCT, and other third-party funds that we manage, at GBP 1.8 billion of assets under management. The next slide really talks about the year being a story of two halves. I think that's been reflected when we put out our interim results, where we had a -4% in the first half of the year, which was, including currency, a -GBP 55 million decrease in value on the portfolio. Again, that was recognizing the current market environment, where companies were preserving their capital, where the value of technology stocks in the public markets was reducing down. But that was a slower rate of reduction than we'd seen in FY23, where we'd taken most of the value reductions in those companies already. And as Martin outlined already, in the second half of the year, we saw a stabilization in the portfolio. And the numbers in the second half are reflecting really an uplift overall in the fair value. The year in total ends up slightly positive at GBP 6 million of fair value gains, but that is then offset by GBP 24 million overall of currency movements. That leads us to that -1% for the full year. What you will see in the second half of the year in the numbers is a combination of three factors, one being the existing portfolio showing stability in its values. You can see here we've had uplifts overall of GBP 87 million in the portfolio being offset by GBP 31 million of declines. A net position of GBP 56 million uplifts. That's reflecting the stabilization of the existing portfolio, but also uplifts from the Forward acquisition, where we bought that at a discount. Similarly with the Seedcamp Fund III, where we've acquired that at a discount. That's really demonstrating in the numbers the environment that we're in currently, where liquidity has played such a part in the private markets, where we're seeing disconnects in asset values. That's why we've been focusing on secondary investments. Looking at deployment, I think we share this chart with you every year. And I think Ben's point about reacting to the environment, I think, is something that's really important to us. We're an investment company, and we have to move with the cycle. And although it looks like it's all a bit toppy in 2022, and clearly last year we only deployed GBP 65 million, of which GBP 32 million were on secondaries, so clearly our deployment has dropped significantly in the last year. I think when you look at this holistically, and certainly when we provide an outlook going forward into the next financial year, where we think deployment will be back up to what we would say closer to historic levels, I think that what this just reflects is that the environment that we've been operating in, and in 2022, you'll see a very large chunk of that investment was into follow-ons. And that was really important at the time because we needed to make sure that we put enough cash into our better companies so that they could weather the downturn. And I think that's very much shown that those companies that were well funded during the downturn have performed well. It was natural that as the cycle was starting to turn, that we would deploy more capital into our existing companies to give them that extra bit of runway. Then in 2023, obviously a bit of an overhang, but closer to averages. And obviously last year was a standout year. There's no doubt about it. We were in cash preservation mode for the balance sheet. It was unclear this time last year. It was really unclear when the cycle would turn. And so therefore it was wise for us to preserve capital and to not deploy. I think the other thing that's important to bear in mind when we talk about deployment last year is that in private markets, it's very hard to value these companies when the cost of capital is continuing to shift. And that's really what's caused the liquidity problem in our sector. I think a real slowdown last year in deployment, because trying to make sure that you were paying the correct price for a good firm last year was very difficult in an environment where the cost of capital was still moving. I think as we move now into the next stage of the cycle, and the cost of capital, certainly in the last six months, has looked much more stable. I think now we're looking to an environment where it may come down, then I think it again becomes more attractive for us and easier for us to value companies to make those investment decisions. So we would expect it to our deployment. I think it's perfectly natural for it to be high as we go into the cycle, for it to be low as we are through the cycle. We would expect it to come back closer to the norms in this next financial year. But just showing maybe what we have actually done over the last 12 months, we've not been sitting on our hands. We've continued to support our existing companies where they have needed capital. So we've done quite a bit of follow-on work. But we have continued to invest in the next generation of exciting startups. And I think what this shows is a really good mix, whether it's Oliva, which is in the digital remote mental health space, through to IMU, which is a deep tech digital health area, a company that's helping physicians to manage and understand people's immune systems much better. And so very, very different types of businesses, but we have continued to invest. I think at the end of the period last year, we did, and we talked about when we went to raise capital last year, we were very clear with the market that we were raising capital because we felt that this disconnect between the public and private markets meant that there were good opportunities for us to pick up good assets at a decent price in the secondary market. And that's why we raised the capital last year. That's absolutely what we did with both Forward Partners acquisition and the Seedcamp deal. And we've got a pipeline of other companies that we're portfolios and companies that we're looking at. So I think, again, that's quite natural. I think we'll see in the first quarter of this year, once we go through this year, again, the secondary market is where we do see really interesting opportunities right now. And so again, I think it's perfectly natural that we would move back in towards lean into those secondary opportunities as opposed to getting back to doing very high volume of primary deals. As far as returns go, I think we've been very clear that our target of 20% NAV growth per year and our 10% cash of opening gross portfolio value cash back to the balance sheet per year is something that we think is very important. We think it is long-term achievable within this sector. However, inevitably, it's through the cycle. And both NAV growth and realizations don't respect, unfortunately, financial year boundaries. And so therefore it is over an average 3-5-year period. And so we're very pleased that our average return since listing is still 31%, is 31% still over the 20% that we would target through the cycle. That our realizations is sitting at 16% as opposed to our target of 10%. Again, any single year, those numbers can go up and down. But through the cycle, we believe that that sort of performance is why people should be investing in a listed asset that invests in these exciting private companies. So I think that's something that's important for us. So we're very pleased that we've been able to maintain that performance through this financial year. Do you want to talk about specifically returns? Yes. I think as we've described many times, realizations are very important to us. They bring capital back to the balance sheet that we can reinvest into the portfolio and into new investment opportunities. And they also prove the value that we're holding them at in the books. And we have a track record of selling our assets above our holding value. But the other important factor to recognize in venture capital as an asset class is that you have to create a portfolio of assets. It's a risk business, and you triage risk by creating a portfolio. Here we demonstrate the returns, and we've delivered over GBP 500 million of capital back to the balance sheet since our 2016 original IPO. And this shows the return profile at different multiples of capital. The returns in terms of proceeds are very much skewed to the winners, as you would expect. The team spend a lot of their time in this sort of middle cohort of assets. Martin's touched on that we have a very rigorous program to move companies on out of the portfolio at the right time. That's an ongoing focus for us, ensuring that the returns are skewed towards the right-hand side of this chart. Managing the portfolio is important when you're in investments that are earlier stage and also when you're in those companies for 7+ years. What you can see here is the returns that have been delivered over many years in this process. What we will look to for the coming year, where we've already outlined that the market for M&A is improving, is that we'll have roughly GBP 100 million, we believe, coming back to the balance sheet. So we'll see these numbers in terms of the returns profile increasing. There will likely be a spread on the right-hand side with companies exiting, but also in the middle cohorts as well. We'll continue to see that capital comes back, but it shows our return profile over time. The importance of the breadth of the portfolio is demonstrated here. Just touching on income and costs, we've shown the highlights upfront in terms of the income statement. What we very much focus on is the net operating costs. Looking at our income that we generate from the investments that we make in terms of third-party managed funds, but also the cost base of the group. And I think when people look at Molten as an investment, it's important for them to understand that they're effectively getting their cost base subsidized by the income that we manage from other structures. And that is delivering, therefore, a cost which is less than 1%, substantially less than 1% of net asset value. And if you compare that into other structures, you would often see a 2% type fee structure being a drag to performance. And what we intend to do, and it continues to be a focus for us, is as we increase the third-party assets that we hold, we can increase the income that we have coming through to the income statement. And that therefore offsets the cost base of the group even further. And we recognize that as we scale, we should see more efficiencies. The cost won't scale in line with the assets under management. So we should be able to drive increased efficiencies in that metric. On the right-hand side, we're just giving people a reflection of the NAV per share and the NAV growth over time. As people who have been invested in us for quite some years know, we've been building the balance sheet and the portfolio. The high point of financial year 2022, we were very quick to reduce down the values in the portfolio. Roughly GBP 300 million of value was taken out from reductions in value. That's really just reflecting what's occurred in the public market multiples. Then we're currently moving from that 9.37 high point at GBP 6.62 a share at this financial year end. We are very much focused on NAV per share accretive deployment of capital as we've described. Maybe just a very quick word about the portfolio. Obviously, this is the first opportunity we give to show the core assets. As I said before, these are the assets that drive our NAV. They're the later stage assets. I think it's a good opportunity just to, it's a first opportunity to actually show what's happening with a number of the companies. In broad terms, what I would say is that we've continued to take a prudent approach to valuations. We look for commercial traction. I think that's something that's really important for us. And so as Ben and the team are working on the valuations, we're trying to reflect what's happening in the company as opposed to what's happening elsewhere, albeit taking benchmarks from the public markets and multiples, as you'd expect. Overall, I think the message that I would give from the portfolio is there's not a huge degree of change. It's still a very diversified portfolio. Overall, particularly in the second half of the year, it's been very, very stable. So we would obviously be happy to take any individual questions. Across the board, the important thing to bear in mind here is that this is a portfolio approach. We are nicely diversified. We're not heavily concentrated on any individual assets. Those assets sit across in the core across a range of different sectors. So I think that gives us, as a platform, much more optionality to invest, but also much better ability to smooth returns. I maybe just touch on some of those drivers of growth in the portfolio. So everyone's probably aware, we don't put out the individual valuations of each company. And what we do, therefore, do is aggregate the characteristics of the core. And what you can see is that the core continues to grow strongly over 50%. I think when people reflect on public market companies, clearly 50% growth reflects the stage of these businesses in many cases, but it's also substantial growth, which drives our fair value. And as Martin outlined at the outset of this presentation, the gross margins is something that we're very much focused on. We see strong gross margins, which average 67% here, as an indication of pure tech businesses underlying the portfolio, but also the ability of those companies to drive profitability at the right point in their growth journey. That can obviously translate down to strong EBITDA growth when you have high gross margins. Resilience in the portfolio has still been a feature and a focus. What you can see on the cash runways chart on the right-hand side is that the companies, and we've made a statement that 85% of the core have more than 18 months of cash runway. You can see that the blue bars are trending to the right as we move from the prior year into FY24. This slide really touches a little bit just to give some more insight on the valuation process itself. I think the first point to note is that the balance between the calibrated last round, which is where you take the price of a recent investment from a company where they've raised third-party capital, and you use that as your starting benchmark. You then calibrate that to movements in the market for changes in valuations of peers, but also movements in the company's performance relative to its projections at the time of raising that capital. That is a feature of the IPEV guidelines, which points to third-party validation from the market of the value of those companies. The second most used valuation technique is the market comparable, where you just purely reflect company peer group, public company peer groups, multiples against the commercial traction of the underlying portfolio company. What you'll see in this period is that while there have been less market transactions, as a lot of the VC market has been preserving capital, we've moved much more to market comparables to underpin the valuation of our businesses, and therefore over 57% in this period. The other points to raise here is that multiple that has been applied is a weighted average. So it shows a range of multiples from one upto 15, but the average weighted average is under 7x. And when you reflect that against the growth of the portfolio, clearly we feel that that is a prudent number to apply and shows room for upside in these companies as they continue to grow. Maybe just a couple of words about the Forward Partners acquisition and Seedcamp secondary. I think everyone's very familiar. We spent a lot of time talking to the market last year about Forward Partners. We've been able to acquire a good set of assets, which not unlike ours, a lot of the value is concentrated in a number of later stage assets for us, later stage for them, probably slightly earlier stage series A type assets for us. We've named some of those here. That integration has gone extremely well. It's been relatively seamless. Bringing the team across has been really helpful for us. It gives us, brings that capability to invest in those slightly earlier stage companies that is not traditionally where we've invested. And as you invest earlier, the risks you take, the way you invest is different. There's a reason that we don't do seed investing ourselves is because it's a different discipline. We want to be focused on doing what we're best at. What we're best at is venture growth or those companies as they rapidly start to scale. What Forward Partners are very good at is picking them up at that seed level or post-seed prior to the very rapid scaling. So bringing that capability into the business has been really helpful for us and has enhanced and grown our investment capability across the piece. Really important piece of the jigsaw as we try to build out that multi-stage pan-European platform. That's worked very well, and that team has come in. Obviously, we were able to acquire that business at an attractive valuations level. We've seen some of those uplifts coming through. For me, what I would really like to see is some of their larger companies move into our core as they develop and go through the process. That's really what this is all about. I think the secondary that we did with Seedcamp is also very interesting. We led with it, I think, on a no-names basis when we were raising because we were obviously looking at that as a pretty classic opportunity of the type of deal that we see and we're seeing more and more of. This is where we did a very similar acquisition of the back end of a portfolio of Seedcamp a number of years ago and delivered very good returns. So we know how this market works. What the Seedcamp acquisition brought us was a bunch of assets that are actually quite later stage. We know them quite well, much easier to value, but they were in a vehicle in a fund that had really returned what it needed to return to its investors, but needed to clean up. In an environment where these are illiquid assets, then some of those investors, some of those investors just want the last bit of their cash out of that vehicle so they can deploy it elsewhere. For us, that's fine. We don't mind waiting a bit longer. If we understand the assets, it's fine for us to bring them in. The seller will accept a discount to gain that liquidity. We then get those assets. They come into our balance sheet, and then we're happy to put them through our process of exiting, depending on what the assets are. If it takes us a bit longer to make that realization, then so be it. But it is a different cadence to the type of primary investments we make. It is about providing liquidity to the market, and that is a real opportunity at this particular stage in the cycle. So therefore, for us to raise the capital at the end of last year to be able to take advantage of these types of opportunities was absolutely critical. And we have a pretty healthy pipeline of similar types of businesses. I don't think that liquidity, even if the economic environment changes in public markets and rates through this year, I think that opportunity in private markets, because there's a lag, will remain with us for some time. So we still have probably 12-18 months where I think these types of deals will be really attractive. And we're very well positioned to be able to take advantage of them. So the outlook for the next year, and I'm conscious that we wanted to take roughly half an hour, give you time to ask questions. So I'll wrap up relatively quickly. It's been a very difficult couple of years for the sector. And we took our medicine like everybody else over the last few years as far as trying to get our NAV to a realistic view and to reflect the cost of capital and where the market is. And so therefore, over the year, for us to be able to be flat, if you'd offered me flat a year ago, I would have definitely taken it. And I think particularly in the second half, seeing these valuations stabilizing, I think is a really important time for our market. Despite working very hard on the portfolio, we have spent the year in building the foundations that enable us to be able to scale the business and to deliver this multi-stage pan-European platform as we start to come through the cycle. We're not calling the bottom quite yet, but we do believe that we're close. And so therefore, the work that we've put in over the last few years in managing the portfolio, building out our exits capability, and building our third-party capability to deliver to multi-stage investing, I think has been a really, really important. It's been a really important year for us. So we're very, very comfortable with where we have got to and the position we are as we come out of the year. I think, add to that, and starting to see to bear the fruits of the work that we did on realization and start to see those realizations come through, slightly improved M&A environment. I got asked by a journalist this morning, so we're calling the IPO markets back? That's not what we're saying at all. Just to be absolutely clear, the visibility we have on the GBP 100 million, we are not anticipating any of those to be IPOs. This is the M&A market that is looking slightly more favorable and that we've positioned ourselves nicely for. So that's what we see over the next year. I think we're very excited about the ability for us to be able to support the next generation of entrepreneurs. You only have to see what's happening with AI, with the tech bull run in the public markets over the last couple of years, to see that the market is coming back to the view that technology can have a major impact on all businesses. And even though we only invest in tech businesses, effectively every company, particularly in an AI-enabled world, is a tech company. And so therefore, our ability to invest in those companies, particularly those that are enabling enterprises to get the most out of their data and their technology, we think is really, really important. And so therefore, we look forward with a great deal of encouragement around the sector, confidence in the stability of the NAV, and with an improving macro environment over the coming year or so, we think this is a really interesting time for us and our business. I think we'll probably draw it to a close there. Do you want to touch on the capital allocation policy? I do want to touch on the capital allocation. Thanks, Ben. This is why a CEO should never be allowed out without a CFO. Thank you, Ben. I think it's really important also, as we start to see those realizations, the next question that is obviously going to be coming into shareholders' minds is, what are you going to do with that money? I think it's really important for us to be really clear, and we've been doing a lot of thinking. We've talked, engaged with shareholders and the market and our board about this. So we do have an allocation policy that we've agreed at the board. What we've agreed is that we will continue to invest. We'll make sure that we have, we'll take the same medicine that we offer to our own portfolio companies, which means you have to have visibility out to 12-18 months of your overheads. You have to make sure that you have enough liquidity and enough dry powder in your business to be able to see through over 18 months. So clearly, that's our first priority. We have certain obligations with LP positions that clearly we want to make sure that we can meet over the next 18 months. But then beyond that, we will go back into the market to invest in really good opportunities. There will be good opportunities. We will continue to invest. We'll continue to follow on in our best companies that we already have in the portfolio. But that does then leave us with some available capital to engage in share price accretive activities, support the share price and our shareholders through buybacks. So we have agreed that we will do a minimum of 10% of our realizations back to support the share price. We think that's the right thing to do at this time. We have obviously announced our policy today, and we will give more detail about that in the annual report and accounts. Anything else I've forgotten? I think that's it. Any questions for Ben or for me? Sorry, to Tim. Morning. Tim Stormont from Deutsche Numis. Three questions for me on M&A and exit, the increase in inquiries and conversations you're having. Is there a particular theme to that in terms of types of assets, subsectors of assets that are sort of looking particularly attractive in that sort of negotiations that people are having with you? Secondly, in terms of competition, in terms of changes, have you seen changes in levels of activity? And if so, at what stages are you seeing that? And then thirdly, you talked about investments going back to potentially sort of kind of historic levels. If you're looking at your pipeline, can you give us a sense of what's primary follow-ons or more of the secondary opportunities that you're seeing? Okay. So first question around M&A activity. We're not seeing any particular theme if you look at the full that we have visibility on, which broadly make up the 100. They're all different. So we are seeing private equity looking to do some roll-ups on technology. We're seeing strategic acquisitions where companies are well positioned and fairly typical strategic type acquisitions. So a lot of companies with a lot of cash on their balance sheets looking to get growth through acquisition. And inevitably, then there are others that are executing through other VC roll-up type businesses. So I don't think we're seeing any fixed pattern. We've got many conversations going on, as one would expect, with a portfolio of over 100 businesses. I think what we're seeing is a lot of those conversations we've been having increasingly over the last 12 months, a lot of them are coming to fruition, whereas previously less so. We've got at least one formal, maybe two formal processes running with a banker instructed with a proper good old-fashioned M&A process, which we haven't really seen over the last couple of years. So I would say in our portfolio, I can't speak for others, in our portfolio, we're not seeing a particular trend, but we're seeing all of the normal historic routes to exits starting to pick up, with the exception of the IPO market, which of course will come back when it comes back. But no, so I don't think we've seen any particular trend there. I think as far as competition goes, not really. I think the major change in the competition came when there was a lot of kind of fast money being sprayed around in 2021. That all obviously went away, but that's not the last 12 months. That went away 18 months, 2 years ago. I think we're probably back into the more traditional type. When you look at top-tier assets, you tend to see the same top-tier players. So if you look at the deals we've done, the syndicates that we've been building are pretty much typical of what we would have been doing long-term. So I don't think there's been any significant change. Probably a little bit more crossovers, a few crossover funds still back in. But I don't think we've identified any real particular change as far as overall competition. What hasn't changed, which is always the same, is that the best assets are very competitive to get into. And that hasn't changed. And so the top assets that we would like to consider, the ones that we want to invest in, are still really, really competitive. And so I don't really see any change in that. I think to that point, where we're seeing a slight opening up of the market, firstly, we've seen improvement in M&A, but we're also seeing those later-stage pre-IPO crossover players putting capital to work. And those deals that they are investing in have been very competitive with high multiples being paid. So the stages beyond where we invest seem to be becoming more active again. Yeah. And I can't remember your third question. Investments. Investments. Yeah. I mean, I think it's always very wary forecasting where you're going to invest because at the end of the day, we're going to invest where we see opportunities. You're never quite sure where the next opportunity is going to come from. I would say that our pipeline for direct deals is not as thick as it was probably two years ago. There are still companies, but the ones that tick all of the boxes, those tier ones, there aren't as many. We're just not looking at tier two, tier three businesses anymore, certainly not in the current environment. I would expect direct investments to be still relatively muted in that deployment. Secondary is definitely a huge opportunity there. I think there's, as I said earlier on, they tend to be lumpy, tend to be portfolios or bigger chunks. So I think we will deploy probably more capital into secondaries in total over the next year. And I think the final point around follow-ons, we've got a very rigorous and disciplined follow-on process, apart from anything else, in order to enable us to manage our cash. And I think our defensive portfolio follow-ons will probably not be that dissimilar to last year. So supporting the good companies we have. We may, as realizations come through, we may well be a little bit more offensive. Actually, I don't want to be offensive, no. We'll be a little bit more proactive in taking maybe a slightly larger stake than we have to in some of our better companies as they raise capital. Because the reality is it's always better to invest in a company you know well that's doing well than one you don't. And so I think we'll probably see a bit of an uptick there. Gerry. Gerry Hennigan, [audio distortion]. Martin, aside from the opportunity you see in the secondaries, would it be fair to say that you're seeing more value earlier in the cycle rather than late in the cycle? And was that a factor behind Forward Partners? Yeah. I mean, it's a really interesting question. It's one we debate a lot. I think obviously going slightly earlier, do you mean earlier stage? Yes. Going slightly earlier stage businesses, clearly there's more potential upside because they are early stages and they can grow quicker. So I think that in itself is, I think in some respects, more interesting. But there's more risk. And the reality is the checks are smaller. And so when in delivering 20% NAV return, we can't deliver 20% NAV return by writing a whole bunch of GBP 1 million, GBP 2 million checks, even if we get a 5x or 10x. So you have to deploy capital at scale into the best businesses to get the returns. And so I think inevitably when you're in cash preservation, balance sheet protection, you are going to go slightly earlier, write slightly smaller checks. I think one of the great challenges we have as a business and one of the great challenges that we're going to face as we start to come out of the cycle is that as we get realizations, as we get third-party capital, then how do we deploy that? But the reality is we've made most of our returns historically in A plus B investments and in secondaries. Now, that's where you make the good returns. So I think it's really important for us to not lose focus on that area. But the reality is we are doing more earlier stage deals. And I think just one kind of build on that is that quite often to get into that later stage deal, you need to be in early because those ones are so competitive. So that's part of the early stage strategy is, of course, returns, but it's also to be positioned to be able to write those big checks later on. Just on that note, is there a commitment to provide a certain amount of capital towards Forward Partners, or does it just purely depend on the opportunities as they arise? It purely depends on the opportunity. We did in our returns analysis, as we do with any investment, we look at what its value now, how it's priced, and what capital do we need to put in in order to realize that value. So we're very clear about what that needs to be. We've allocated capital to that this financial year to Nic and the team, both to do more of those types of deals that he's done historically, but also for us to be able to realize the returns from the portfolio. So I think we're pretty clear about what we have to put in. The fact is every deal that comes through, whether it's an ex-Forward deal, a primary deal, or a secondary deal, has to sit through our returns analysis. So they've kind of got to fight. It's a level playing field. Just lastly, and maybe more for Ben, the makeup of the core this time at the end of March included sort of 20 assets as opposed to, I think, 17 in September. There were 4 added here. All had uplifts to valuation. I know they're at the small end of the valuation spectrum, but can you give some detail in terms of why they come in? Particularly, some of them had been in the core before and had exited and come back in again. Yeah. I want to answer that with just a reminder of how we define the core. It's the companies in the portfolio which deliver approximately 60%+ of the value of the portfolio. So we give everybody the look through on those individual investments. And each period, there's a materiality bar in terms of fair value for those that are in and those that are out. And so as we go through reporting periods, we'll have some companies that will be in and then drop out because others grow quicker than they are, or we've taken the value down for any particular event. In this period, we've broadened it out to 20 companies. And each of the four that have come in have had either uplifts from fundraising environments or from the commercial traction of the underlying companies. And we think in the case of Perkbox, as an example, it's already in the public markets that there's a transaction underway there. So it's important for us, we think, given the materiality of that company to showcase, if you like, to the investors and give that transparency of what the holding value is. So each of those businesses are demonstrating good growth. But what we will see period to period is that that core will shift and change. Less change, obviously, at the top end where there's a bit more materiality. But as Martin outlined earlier, the breadth of that core is a nice balance. The largest company, in this case, Thought Machine, in terms of value, is about 7% of the portfolio. So not skewed to any one company. Hi. Kieran O'Sullivan at Berenberg here. Thanks for the great stats on cash runway on the core portfolio. But I was wondering if you could give any color on the health of the emerging portfolio and whether there's been any changes there? Yeah. The emerging, if you look at the table that we put in the financial review, we're breaking out the size of the emerging over GBP 500 million of value, but we're also showing the cost of the emerging, which is effectively being held at 1.1 times. So that emerging portfolio is, as it describes, the companies that could come up into the core as they scale and grow. And those are the companies that we're investing in at the original early stages. When you first invest in those businesses from a fair value perspective, it's usually at least a year before any change will occur. And as we describe in the presentation, we have downside protection in terms of our investments being through preference shares. So the health of the emerging portfolio is in good shape, but it's a real mix. So you'll see some companies that aren't scaling and growing in the way that we need them to, and you'll see some that are performing in the way that we anticipate that they would, and they will come into the core over time. What we always say with the emerging is that's where the portfolio management work is really happening. We try to give transparency in terms of the sector thematics of those companies, but some of them will obviously be too early for us to give them an individual focus in the presentations. But your point on resilience and cash runway is correct. That's where a lot of our focus goes to. And it's pleasing to see that the companies are well resourced, and we keep a good focus on their runway and their capital efficiency as well. Do we have any questions? We do have some questions online. Sure Milosz Papst, Edison Group. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Milosz, please go ahead. Your line is open. Okay. Thank you for taking my question. On the evaluation side. Yes. Hello. Can you hear me? We can hear you now. We can, yes. Hello. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Please go ahead, Milosz. We can hear you. Okay. Perfect. Yes. Thank you for my questions. I just, I mean, yes. Sorry. Just if you can just see the main drivers behind the decline measured at last round, which the reason for the decline, the average discount taken, mostly because of the macro factors and the improvements in the public environment and public. Just give us the underlying factors that would be helpful. Milosz, I'm going to try and paraphrase what I think I heard because we didn't get all of that. I think you're asking a question on the shift in the valuations of the portfolio between calibrated last round and the multiples that we've applied. I think it was a reflection of what's happening in the public markets where we've seen technology multiples improve. For us, when we're looking at through the lens of valuation on these companies, we're very much looking at the individual businesses' commercial traction and then reflecting that against multiples in the market. I would say the multiples overall that we're seeing have come down. That's a weighted average multiple. Sometimes it's dependent on individual characteristics of, let's say, one of the larger companies skewing that multiple somewhat. But certainly, we've seen the trend in the portfolio where the average multiples have been coming down over time as we've reflected those public market averages. We do look at public market indices, but then we also look at technology subsectors. So when you get into each individual company, the peer groups reflect the subsector that's relevant to them. And so you'll see quite a range of different outcomes for each of those businesses. But certainly, where we've seen less market activity over the past year for fundraising, but also for M&A and exits, then moving more to those public market comps has been the right approach, I feel. That was an answer. If that was the question he asked. That was an answer. Thank you. In terms of the. It's a very broken line. I think next caller, I think. Yes. So thanks. I mean, for every discount taken. Yeah. We can't hear. I think we go to the next. Okay. Okay. Next question. That's fine. Thank you. Apologies. We have no further questions at this time. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Martin for any closing remarks. Over to you, sir. Okay. We have still one more question. Tintin. Yeah. I think he's still working. Sorry. Tim Stormont is in the mix and he wasn't hearing you. Oh, yes. Sorry. Hi. I think I'm remembering correctly, but in previous announcements, I think you talked about the portfolio. If you looked at the portfolio companies, there was maybe a GBP 20 million cash requirement for funding by the portfolio companies. Could you maybe give an update on if that's substantially higher now or kind of broadly the same? And then in terms of the remaining portfolio as well, if we look at it's valued at about 1x held book. If you could just maybe give us a sense of kind of how wide is that range, the distribution of the range? Because obviously, within the core, it's obviously probably a tighter range. Maybe I'll take the first. If you take the second, if that's all right, Ben. Okay. So the first one is that we have a very clear defined process for it's really cash flow management, apart from anything else for us working out what we think we're going to need to support the portfolio. Last year, we said that we thought that would be GBP 20 million. The reality is that we've tried to manage that as tightly as we can. And for last year, in fact, it was just under half that. So I think what it showed was portfolio is in better shape than we might have anticipated, and we've managed our cash pretty well. So it actually came in much lower. For this next year, we think, again, it will be probably about GBP 20 million. But I think this year, it will be because these companies are back into growth, and we're much clearer about where they stand now. So we have got pretty good visibility on that. And that is, we think this year will be the same as last year. Last year came in much lower. We think this year will probably come in. And that's the cash flow that we're allocating to that. Yeah. In terms of the emerging portfolio, there's a fairly broad range. So those that are not performing will be held less than our invested capital. And then those that are performing start to move up. But I'd say within that distribution, when you invest in those businesses, as I said, at least a year where they're being held at the cost invested. And then as you see the commercial traction coming through, then you can start to apply other valuation techniques that show and demonstrate the growth. But just below the core and the ones that tend to dip in and dip out, we kind of have what we might define as a key emerging, which will be the more mature companies that have been in the portfolio for a longer period of time. So as well as a range of valuations, you've also got a range of maturities of those companies within there as well. Okay. I think that comes to the end of the no more questions. Thank you very much for your time. As I said, it's nice to be able to do it in person. I guess the kind of closing remarks I'd make is that we're very pleased to see the stabilization in private markets. I think there has been this discussion around the dislocation between public and private markets for some time. We're very encouraged that the discount has started to narrow as people have honed in on that disconnect. But fundamentally, our job and what we did last year and what we will be focusing on next year is to make sure that we deal and focus on what we can control. That is to help these really exciting companies and these really inspirational founders to be able to deliver real value in their markets. If we do that and their companies grow well and have proper commercial traction and really apply the disruptive technologies to the problems that companies are facing, then we think the valuations will come back. We think we will be able to continue to deliver that 20% NAV growth per year through the cycle and 10% cash realizations back to the balance sheet. We look forward to the next year with, as I think I said earlier to one of the other journalists I was speaking to, with cautious optimism in an environment that does look at a macro level to be improving and coming our way. Thank you very much. Thank you.