Woodford-backed Touchstone Innovations beats forecasts ahead of takeover
Touchstone Innovations, the Neil Woodford-backed company which commercialises and invests in business ideas, has beaten forecasts ahead of a takeover by IP Group.
The numbers
Touchstone’s net portfolio value increased 38 per cent year on year, according to the group’s full-year results this morning, to £461.1m.
This resulted in a pre-tax profit of £46.8m, up from a loss of £63.1m last year.
The net asset value (NAV) per share shot up by 12 per cent to £3.16 excluding costs from IP Group’s offer, or £3.12 including the costs.
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Why it’s interesting
Touchstone rebuffed a takeover offer from peer IP Group earlier this year, even though the deal looks set to go ahead since most of Touchstone’s shareholders agreed to it.
On 12 September, the IP Group offer valued each Touchstone share at £2.66. But as Touchstone’s chief executive Ross Cummings pointed out, this is 15 per cent less than the net asset value per share as of the end of July.
Touchstone’s portfolio of businesses have made a number of notable developments this year.
Cancer treatment company PsiOxus Therapeutics signed licence agreement with pharma company Bristol-Myers Squibb potentially worth up to $936m, subject to completion of milestones.
Crescendo Biologics signed collaboration and licence agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical potentially worth up to $790m, while Abzena signed two licensing agreements with pharma companies for its antibody drug technology potentially worth up to $300m and £128m.
Read more: Major Touchstone shareholders sell out after £500m IP Group offer rebuffed by board
What Touchstone said
“We now have a dozen unquoted companies of material scale and considerable potential, many of which made significant progress and a number of which are approaching key inflexion points,” said chief executive Ross Cummings.
“We also have great depth to our portfolio, with another 20 or so portfolio companies showing rapid development.
“We are actively involved in discussions about partnerships, licensing and other corporate developments across a number of our larger unlisted portfolio companies that may lead to transactions resulting in fair value gains.
We have access to outstanding opportunities from the UK’s Golden Triangle cluster and the people, platform, skills and financial resources to continue to build value over the long term.
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