Good morning, Jake. Thank you very much, and welcome everyone to IP Group's 2026 half year results presentation, and thanks very much to all the Investor Meet Company team and Mark for hosting today's session.

Much appreciated as always. For those who don't know me, I'm Greg Smith.

I'm the Chief Executive of IP Group. With me today is David Baynes, our Chief Financial and Operating Officer.

We've deliberately tried to keep today's presentation a bit shorter and more focused. It's the half year, after all.

I will cover the half year highlights, progress across the portfolio, and our strategic priorities. I'll get DB to take you through the financials before I return to summarize, and then, of course, there will be time for questions.

I would say the headline for today's results is that we have carried the momentum that we had from 2025 into 2026 with further NAV per share growth, strong cash realizations, and as I hope we will demonstrate, broad-based portfolio progress. As usual, the disclaimer is here.

Please note these sort of important disclaimers, particularly the bit about forward-looking statements. This presentation will be up on the Investor Relations section of our website for review post the call.

In terms of what we'll cover today, four short sections: the half year overview, portfolio progress, I think particularly the future value opportunity within that, then financial results, and then a brief summary. Please post questions through the platform as we go, as Jake said.

We'll then group them by theme and answer as many as we can, and we'll do that clearly and directly. Turning first to what we delivered for shareholders in the first half.

Before we do that, I just wanted to note that this year marks IP Group's 25th anniversary. Over that period, we've invested over £1.5 billion, we've helped to form and support more than 600 companies, and those companies have created more than 15,000 jobs.

That track record matters because science investing, in our view, rewards experience, specialist judgment, and also long-term relationships from a shareholder point of view, and also gives us a large and increasingly mature portfolio from which future value and cash realizations can emerge. Today is principally about the delivery in the first half and the little period afterwards, let's move straight into the first half results.

The group made disciplined and tangible progress in the first half. NAV per share increased by about 3% to 114 pence, taking net asset value above a billion.

Since the period end, NAV per share has actually increased further to approximately 117 pence a share as at 11th of September, last Friday. We generated £69 million of cash proceeds in the 6 months, which was slightly more actually than the whole of full year '25.

A further £17 million since June takes our year-to-date proceeds to the mid £80 millions. Portfolio companies raised over half a billion of third-party capital, and we contributed about 5% of this.

This is strong external evidence that other investors are prepared to commit substantial capital to companies as they progress. Now, the largest fair value driver in the period was the further de-risking of Pfizer's obesity programs.

That increased the value of our royalty interest by £27 million to just over £150 million, and we ended the period with a healthy cash balance of £239 million gross. The message is not that one asset performed well.

NAV growth, cash realizations, external funding, and operational milestones all generally moved forward together. Now before going into the detail behind that in the portfolio, I just want to briefly acknowledge the possible offer process during the summer.

I would say, as we put in our RNS release, the board sought to engage constructively with Railpen and its partners, and we remain very grateful for their effort and the constructive engagement of all of the shareholders that we spoke to during that period. As you will have seen, the process did not result in an acceptable proposal, and so our focus as a management team and a board is firmly on delivering the substantial value that we see in the group.

On that note, let's turn to Pfizer. At the full year, I spent a bit of time explaining why that Pfizer obesity royalty interest had become such a significant asset for IP Group and our shareholders.

The first half has added further evidence to that and also reduced development risk. During the period, Pfizer released positive clinical data for the lead program, berebenatide, showing competitive weight loss efficacy alongside favorable tolerability and supporting the potential for a monthly maintenance regimen.

The berebenatide and amylin combination also advanced into Phase 2b, and that was the primary driver of the £27 million uplift that I mentioned. Now, this is an increasingly competitive market, differentiation matters.

I think the potential combination of competitive efficacy, favorable tolerability, and this sort of monthly maintenance profile remains one of the main reasons that Pfizer believes this program can be highly differentiated in that increasingly competitive market. Also to reiterate, Pfizer's committed substantial resource to this.

It is progressing 10 Phase 3 studies this year, and launch is targeted in 2028. As we have said in previous notes, there remains clinical, regulatory, and commercial risk, and as a result, our valuation is based around a probability-weighted method and is discounted.

The progress in the half strengthens both the quality and the breadth of our exposure to a market that is externally forecast at around sort of $100 billion to $150 billion or thereabouts annually by 2030. Hopefully to give you a little bit more color, this slide shows the route to market across the programs where we've got economic exposure.

As I've mentioned, the most advanced of the assets at the top there is berebenatide. Two Phase 3 studies are expected to reach primary completion in October 2027, and that supports a potential first approval in 2028.

There's also a monthly dosing study and seven further Phase 3 studies that could provide potential to broaden the label and therefore the commercial opportunity. Worth noting that just yesterday at a conference, Pfizer also indicated that recruitment across essentially all of the berebenatide Phase 3 studies is now close to completion.

From our point of view, from your point of view as shareholders, that's very encouraging because patient recruitment is often the biggest factor in determining when studies read out and complete, and so it supports good confidence in the current program timetable. As I mentioned, the berebenatide and amylin combination is now in Phase 2b, you can see that there, and that's got primary completion currently expected in April '27.

We also have exposure to an amylin monotherapy and some earlier oral and next-gen programs, and there's, as David will come on to explain, a couple of Phase 1 assets that are not currently attributed value in our model. I think the important takeaway from this for shareholders is that this isn't exposure to a single binary program.

It extends across the lead program, which is an injectable, some combination therapies, the potential for less frequent dosing, and a number of these earlier-stage programs. That gives us several possible routes to value as Pfizer develops the franchise.

I think this point on the carrying value, I think the £150 million we've got it in at, this definitely doesn't reflect Pfizer's commercial ambition, and it's based on these risk-adjusted probabilities. DB will take you through those assumptions in a little bit more detail later today.

In terms of our investment thesis, our default is to hold the asset and receive the royalties, and they're anticipated to begin in 2028 if the development and launch proceeds to the plan that is set out here. This is highly consistent with the venture model.

A small number of exceptional outcomes can drive a very disproportionate share of returns, and this asset, we believe, gives shareholders direct exposure to that potential. That being said, having a deep default path definitely doesn't mean that we stop exploring ways to accelerate value creation for shareholders.

As the program matures and de-risks over this period, we would expect the range of strategic options available to us to broaden out, and we will continue to assess these carefully through the lens of long-term shareholder value. Of course, we remain open to exceptional opportunities should they arise.

On Oxford Nanopore, they made I would say encouraging progress in the half and has performed strongly since the period end from share price point of view. As you can see from the slide, and many of you will have tracked this directly, revenue was at £117 million, which is about a 12% growth at constant currency.

A big thing for us was the fact gross margin increased by 400 basis points to 62%, but I think even more important, and I think this was the bit that came out particularly in the half year results more than the trading statement, was the adjusted EBITDA loss more than halving to just over £22 million. I think one of the key developments has been the strengthening of the leadership team.

Francis joined as CEO in March, and the company has also added a number of senior hires in areas of key capabilities as it prepares for its next phase of commercial growth. I think under that leadership team, it feels to us that there is a more focused, customer-led growth strategy.

The company has spoken about narrowing down the 47 areas in which its technology could compete to the 18 that it considers most attractive. Interestingly, management's own analysis indicates that around 40% to 45% of revenue generated over the last 3 years already comes from those priority markets.

The existing revenues therefore provides something of a strong foundation for that strategy and give the company a credible base from which to expand. The opportunity available, which is clearly set out within their materials, gives very substantial room for expansion.

I think we see this as very much a refinement of focus rather than a wholesale change of direction, and that gives us confidence in the team's ability to execute. That point on profitability or the progress towards profitability, that has been absolutely central to our investment thesis, and I think the results were ahead of where the market appeared to be.

The company remains on track for that EBIT break-even in full year '27 and positive free cash flow in 2028. The other point of note is the cross-licensing agreement with a global diagnostics company that brings $35 million of committed revenue over the next couple of years, but importantly, ongoing royalties, which we believe could be substantial.

They are not currently included in the medium-term guidance, any early adoption, which we might see as soon as this year actually, could increase recognition of that strategic value to the platform. There's been a bit of an increase in the value of our holding since the half year of about £26 million, but we remain very focused on that sort of operating thesis and the route to sustainable profitability.

Delivery against that should also create more attractive monetization options for us over time without pre-judging the timing of those. On the wider portfolio, don't worry, I'm not going to go into all of these in detail, but I think the central message from this slide is breadth and the fact that the progress was not confined to Pfizer or Oxford Nanopore.

Quantum Motion, Quantum Circuits, Oxa completed major funding rounds. First Light Fusion and Mantalate raised capital.

Hysata secured its first commercial electrolyzer order. Centessa was acquired by Eli Lilly.

There's been good progress across the portfolio. I would just say Oxa is worth a brief comments in there.

Following its strategic reset last year and this sharper focus on what we term industrial mobile autonomy, it has formed a new joint venture with the Dubai Future Foundation called SHIFT, and the venture is designed to put autonomous vehicles to work in ports and airports in an integrated product that combines Oxa's self-driving software, its fleet management platform, and its autonomy hardware. This is really targeting practical gains in things like productivity, efficiency, safety, and operational resilience within these environments, and the first scalable commercial deployment is planned before the end of 2027.

From Dubai's point of view, of course, it's trying to support the stated ambition to double its foreign trade by 2033. Of course, given the current regional uncertainty, the near-term emphasis from the company is correctly on disciplined execution and securing those early deployments.

Management definitely deserves the principal credit for delivering that partnership, but it's worth saying IP Group supported the company in bringing it about. This is hopefully a useful example of how our network and our international network can help portfolio companies across these strategic international partners to accelerate into large markets.

Still delivery ahead, but pretty encouraging progress from one of the companies that was affected by a significant valuation reduction last year. Overall, the breadth of the financing, the clinical progress, and the commercial partnerships provides evidence of greater maturity across the portfolio, with a couple of negative movements as a reminder that execution risk always remains in the portfolio.

Cash generation was one of the clearest positives from our first half. We realized £69 million, which compared with about £30 million in the first half of last year, and as I mentioned, it's actually now more than the whole of 2025.

The principal contributors are set out on the slide: Monolith, Centessa, and Hinge Health. I think they both provide sort of some good illustrations of our model.

Hinge Health, following their 2025 IPO, we've now generated a total of £46 million of total proceeds. That was a 50 times multiple of invested capital and almost a 50% IRR.

Monolith is a bit different. That provides an example of where we've had a strategic acquisition of an important deep tech capability, and that was an acquisition by CoreWeave.

Since then, we've generated around £23 million of proceeds this year with, again, greater than 50% overall IRR. I think they show that we can create and realize value from different parts of the portfolio, whether that's a public market success or a strategic acquisition.

It's exactly the sort of profile that we would expect from a diversified science and technology portfolio. Including post-period end receipts, we've now delivered £154 million, just over £154 million, since the beginning of 2025, we're well over halfway towards our £250 million target by the end of 2027.

Looking forward, we continue to see a healthy pipeline of maturing assets and potential realization opportunities over the next 12 to 18 months. Fair to say that timing is never entirely within our control, but the breadth of the portfolio gives us a number of different paths to achieving that target.

As a reminder of the way the components of IP Group work together, Parkwalk provides differentiated access at sort of pre-seed, seed, and into Series A through our dedicated EIS funds and relationships with leading universities. The permanent balance sheet, which shareholders are exposed to, supports selective companies as they mature, while our private funds can add science and technology scale-up capital alongside the balance sheet.

That additional capital matters in three ways: it can accelerate our strongest businesses across a broader opportunity set, it can generate management fees to help reduce our net overheads over time, and strong investment performance in those funds can generate performance fees for shareholders. The model gives us proprietary sourcing, long-term ownership, and the potential to increase the capital available to portfolio companies without relying solely on our balance sheet.

On the subject of third-party capital, we made progress in expanding that platform during the period, although I'd say the focus is now firmly on delivery of the two new mandates that we announced during the first half. Our strategic relationship with abrdn is moving quickly towards its first investment, and we expect the initial portfolio to be up and running by the end of the year.

This is definitely an early example of a dedicated defined contribution mandate providing access to scaling science and technology businesses, and we believe there is good potential for it to provide a route for further long-term capital savings coming into this sector. In Australia, just after our full year results, we also launched the $50 million IP Group Climate Catalyst Fund.

That was with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation in Australia, which is the sort of equivalent of the Australian green bank. Similarly for that fund, the next milestone is to begin investing that capital by the end of the year into Australian companies that are addressing hard-to-abate industries.

Together with Parkwalk and Hostplus and those funds, we manage around £550 million of third-party capital, and we have further opportunities in the pipeline where we aim to demonstrate material progress over the next 6 to 12 months. This remains, at the moment, a smaller part of today's shareholder value story, but over time, it should help us support more companies, reduce our overheads, and create this performance fee potential if we can deliver strong returns.

I'll now turn to the first half outcomes in the portfolio, but also the future value opportunities that we see within them. At 30th of June, the total portfolio was valued at about £900 million, and that's equivalent to about 100 pence per share, 103 pence per share.

The top five assets account for about 50% 50 pence per share. You can see them set out on the slide.

Probably just worth recognizing each of these has different value drivers. Royalty income and clinical de-risking for our license, listed market performance and path to profitability at Nanopore, clinical milestones at Censo and Mission, and industrial scale-up at Hysata.

As I mentioned, Hysata secured its first binding megawatt-scale order during the first half, and delivery is expected in the first half of 2027. I should also note that Mission Therapeutics, their acute kidney injury program, was acquired by Dyadic for potential consideration of up to nearly $300 million, and obviously not all of that was upfront, but the upfront they've received will extend Mission's runway for its core Parkinson's program.

I think the broader point here to make is the top five assets do provide distinct routes to value, but the other 53 pence per share gives us and shareholders exposure to a much wider group of businesses and a good level of optionality within those. I'm just going to highlight a few of those over the course of the next few slides.

Before I do that, it would be worth just pointing out our successful exit in Centessa. This is another example of realized value, not paper value.

Our involvement in this company began through a University of Cambridge spin-out that we backed back in 2017. Apseq became part of a roll-up Centessa, which then listed on NASDAQ in 2021, and then earlier this year, it was acquired by Eli Lilly for about $6 billion upfront with a further $1.5 billion in potential milestones.

For us, we sold during the course of the development of that company during its NASDAQ life, and the remaining balance we sold at the point of completion this year. That has given us a realized IRR of about 24%, and there's a bit of potential CVR payments that could be another sort of £3 million, £4 million potentially.

I think, really, this is just to illustrate the validation of the model. Breakthrough university science supported through several stages and has exited to a global pharmaceutical buyer.

We believe that there are a number of assets that look today like Apseq did back then at the early part of its journey. In terms of the rest of the therapeutics portfolio, I think there's just a few things to highlight.

Three milestones particularly from the half stand out. Two of these were catalysts that we flagged at the full year that have now delivered.

Enterprise Therapeutics met its primary endpoint in a Phase 2 cystic fibrosis trial, and that showed improved lung function over 28 days compared with placebo. Microbiotica delivered a second positive Phase 1b, this time, dataset, and that was in melanoma.

I think that's building evidence that it's precision microbiome platform, it's sort of gut microbiome platform, can increase or improve responses in these quite difficult-to-treat indications. Censo began dosing the new Phase 2 study of larsucosterol in June.

As everyone will know, the previous rheumatoid arthritis study didn't meet its primary endpoint, but it showed significant improvements in things like disability, fatigue, and reduction in markers of muscle loss. This trial therefore follows those signals into secondary sarcopenia caused by RA, and we are testing muscle quality, repair, and function in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study that will read out in the second half of '27.

This is worth noting that this sort of sarcopenia market is very significant. It affects around 110 million people globally, and there are no treatments currently approved to treat it.

A safe, oral treatment that improves function would be a very significant unmet need. Censo remains a significant holding from the group from a valuation point of view, and we will, of course, review its valuation through the normal year-end processes in light of the evolving clinical evidence and the commercial opportunity.

I think, for today, the important point is that the company has followed the biology into a more focused trial with a clear unmet need and a very differentiated oral, regenerative approach. The common thread across these is large indications, high unmet need, and programs moving into study that provide clear evidence, and if they're successful, support partnering and value realization.

Two of our companies in the quantum space raised significant capital this period, and the common thread amongst these is that IP Group and Parkwalk were early investors, and our balance sheet exposure to quantum companies is probably worth about 2 pence per share at the half year. These rounds bring substantial third-party capital into that sector and validate the sort of strategic importance of that.

Quantum remains genuinely exciting. It's a longer-duration opportunity, but I think alongside it, we also have significant ownership in businesses tackling quite immediate constraints in AI computing.

I'll just turn to some of those now to round up this section. I think one of the themes for us, and I'm sure you are all seeing it across your lives, is that AI is rapidly moving from experimentation into large-scale industrial deployment.

As models become more embedded in products and services, the constraints are increasingly physical in nature. Things like electricity available to data centers, the heat being produced by conventional processors, and also the energy and time required to move data between the memory bit and the compute bit.

GPUs remain absolutely central to the system, but they definitely can't solve every part of that equation on their own. We have three complementary physics-led approaches: light, memory, and probability.

On the first, Lumai, which is valued at about £9 million, about a 1p a share, where we have a 26% holding, uses three-dimensional optical computing for the matrix multiplication that goes on at the heart of AI inference. During the period, it announced that its first Iris system is now running billion-parameter language models in real time.

That hopefully means something to some of you. I guess sort of in commercial terms, this is designed for high-throughput workloads in data centers, and the plan here is to develop that system, and it will work alongside conventional GPUs rather than trying to replace the whole computing stack.

If you look at their website, you can see those sort of initial products. Intrinsic, on the memory side, again valued at about a penny a share, we own about 28% of this.

This is generating and developing what we call next-generation ReRAM. That's a memory, and it's important because getting faster and non-volatile, i.e., it remembers, and low-power memory can sit much closer to the processor and reduce the energy and a little bit of time moving data between memory and the processor.

Relevant applications here can include things like edge AI, autonomous vehicles, wearables, remote sensing, that sort of thing. The company is well capitalized and is seeing strong commercial interest from important industry participants.

Then finally, at about 0.2 or 3p of a share is our holding in Quantum Dice, and this is photonics and it is for probabilistic computing. The aim here is to try and accelerate problems that required repeated sampling under uncertain conditions.

There's things like logistics and asset management and asset optimization, financial modeling particularly relevant here, and so things that are used in robotics and machine vision. Three very complementary areas of the value chain.

Although these three represent about £20 million-ish of carrying value, we have 17% to 28%, as you can see, ownership, and so a meaningful proportion of any future upside belongs to the group and our shareholders. Each has milestones ahead that could become the next value events.

We expect and hope to be able to report further technical and funding and hopefully some commercial milestones from these businesses over the next 6 months or so. With that summary of the main drivers and some of the future value drivers, I will hand over to DB to take you through the financial results.

Thanks, DB.

Thank you, Greg. Yes, I'll just take you for a quick canter through the financial results, it being only the half year.

Most of this you've heard already, but it's always good to reiterate the message. NAV now about £1.14 was £1.14 at the end of the period.

As actually slightly up, you'll see in the release of Friday, I think it's about £1.17 following improvement in Oxford Nanopore's price. At the end of June, that was a 3.2% increase in the period, which is following the first increase in the period before, a couple of good periods.

Overheads similar, slightly up. I would expect, I think total overheads last year were just under £16 million, I think, for the full year, that is.

I would expect to be slightly higher than that this year, just through the nature of inflation, probably one of the sort of similar amount in the second half, maybe slightly more, maybe making it about £17 million. Overheads still in control and only really growing by inflation.

Gross cash very strong, as you've already heard, gross cash actually up over the period, and I'll talk about that briefly in a minute. Balance sheet, very simple, not much change, actually.

The actual NAV, the portfolio value is pretty much exactly flat at about £907 million, £908 million, and you can see the effect of that. That is, we have invested £30 million in the period, fully itemized in the report, but we've had quite a lot of exits, as you've heard.

Very strong exits of £69 million and more since period end, another £17 million. Exits have been strong.

With the fair value gain, then, taking us back to where we started, effectively. That's what the movement has been.

The value of what we've invested, what we've gained counters about exactly the money that's been realized, which, of course, has moved into cash, as we'll see in a minute. Pfizer royalty asset, Greg has explained this, but always good to actually see what it means in terms of the numbers.

We're actually up from about £127 million to £153 million. The main growth, this is a chart I showed you at the time of the full year, and it's got the main programs.

If you look at this, there's actually got six programs here. The main one there on the left, the lead one at the moment is the berebenatide, the monotherapy, which is the one that's in the Phase 3 clinical trials.

No significant change in the value because the probabilities haven't changed. It's still in that Phase 3 trial.

The next key milestone for that will be if it gets successful completion of that trial, then those percentages will obviously go up, percentage probability, and therefore the value will go up at that time. There has been an increase in the second bar there, so that's a combination therapy, with the GLP and the amylin.

That moved into a Phase 2b trial, so that was 25% probability when we last reported, it's now 39%. If it's successful in that trial, it will ultimately move into a 53% when it moves into the next phase, following the same logic.

That has resulted in most of the increase of about £27 million in the period is actually in that bar there. That's the one that's gone up.

The third bar following is the oral bar. We haven't changed the value on.

Actually, nothing really to report. Greg already explained Pfizer did talk about the fact that they've actually terminated one of their oral assets, but that wasn't our one.

They had one asset they'd sourced from somewhere else. At the moment, we haven't really got anything to report on that oral, at the moment, we're carrying it still at a very low probability of success.

Talking about low probability of success, we do, of course, still have three whole programs we're not really valuing at all. Again, Greg mentioned them, but there's a what's called GIPR, an alternative to the amylin.

That program is now in a Phase 1 clinical trial, as is the prodrug. That prodrug, you can see in the far right there, is actually a quarterly dosage rather than monthly in a Phase 1 trial.

Thing is, at the moment, we still consider it too early to actually put values on those, not least of all, it's very difficult to identify market size to do the calculation. If they progress, certainly if they progress to the Phase 2 trial, we will then have to start recognizing those values, and that will have a relatively significant impact on that value at that time, I would guess.

That's why we're still carrying about £152 million. Going quickly on the funding profile, very slightly different, but pretty much similar as we see.

I tend to talk about a third funded, a third in a year, a third in two years. It's changed very slightly.

Actually, we've only got about 6% to fund for the rest of this year and 19% for the 6 months after that. Actually, 12 months now is only about 25%, and quite a lot of the funding's actually moved out into the year after that, after next half year to the half year after.

If anything, actually, the funding profile has slightly improved over other periods. The truth is, the message always is the rate at which our companies need fund is relatively constant, and it gives you a chance to do fundings as they come along.

You don't get a kind of wall of funding requirements. As always, I say, follow the cash on these things.

The cash is really repeating what we've seen before, but the cash has actually improved. That's because investments of about £30 million have been outweighed considerably by the exits, and a relatively small amount of costs to reduce that.

Really what's happened is effectively the profit we've seen, that sort of £31 million profit, has effectively gone into cash, that's where it is. As we've mentioned already, we haven't been doing buybacks.

Quite a lot of questions about that. We didn't do buybacks in the period, so that money is sitting in cash at the moment.

That explains that increase. I'll hand back to Greg.

Thank you very much, Dave. Let's just quickly finish with a recap of the key messages and a little look forward.

As I mentioned at the start, the first half of 2026 has been a period of disciplined execution and, hopefully, growing momentum that you're seeing. NAV per share increased to 114 pence and has increased further to approximately 117 pence since the period end.

We delivered £69 million of proceeds in the half and, actually, mid-80s, £86 million I think, for the year to date, and that takes total proceeds since the start of 2025 to £154 million, and we remain on track for the £250 million by the end of 2027. From a portfolio point of view, the Pfizer programs continue to de-risk, Oxford Nanopore made good financial and commercial progress, and the broader portfolio attracted over half a billion of third-party capital while delivering milestones that ranged across therapeutics, quantum, autonomy, climate tech, and AI-enabling compute.

As Dave said, we ended June with £240 million of gross cash and deposits. I think, importantly from our point of view, the progress is becoming increasingly visible in outcomes.

Per-share value growth, cash realizations, external validation through funding rounds, and hopefully you're seeing clearer routes to potential future value. This is the same set of priorities that I outlined we would be targeting this year at the full year.

Haven't changed the slide. I guess the first point to make is the sort of accountability, this is what I said we would do and reporting back on the progress that we have made to date.

We've made continued positive NAV per share performance. We have generated that £154 million of exits, as I mentioned, including those post-period receipts since the beginning of 2025.

We've moved the abrdn relationship towards its first investment, we announced that further fund, the Climate Catalyst Fund, and we've maintained a disciplined approach to deployment. For the remainder of the year, those objectives sort of largely still stand, the continued positive NAV per share performance, making the first investments in both of those private capital arrangements, and keeping executing towards that £250 million exits target.

That's the sort of accountability piece. I would say the second point, though, is more around pace and ambition.

You'll have seen that Michael Queen joined us as chair during the half, and he brings a substantial level of experience from his role at 3i, where he was Chief Executive, and many private markets companies, most recently Coller Capital, where he was chair. We also heard a range of views from our shareholders during the summer, and we will continue that engagement now as part of this half year results roadshow.

I would say Michael, the board, and management are using all those inputs to determine and implement the most effective ways for us to be able to accelerate realizations, sharpen our capital allocation, and convert more of the portfolio's underlying value into per-share returns while also retaining the valuation discipline that protects you as shareholders. Third-party interest and that shareholder engagement we saw during the summer underline for us the attractiveness of the underlying assets and also the strategy that we're following.

Of course, the task for us as a management team now is to convert more of that value into outcomes that you as investors can see in cash and per-share returns. As Dave mentioned, we have approximately £50 million of proceeds from realizations that is now available for future shareholder returns under the capital allocation policy that was approved by the board.

Now, of course, following the AGM vote, as you would expect as a public company, we are engaging constructively with shareholders on the appropriate form and timing and how we can deliver against our capital allocation policy. From our perspective, the principle is clear: we should allocate capital where it creates the best risk-adjusted per-share outcomes.

I want to be clear that this is not simply business as usual. We've got a strong portfolio, we've got a clear strategy for growth, and we've got substantial opportunity ahead.

Our priority is execution and converting that opportunity into outcomes that shareholders can see and measure. I thank you all very much for your continued support.

DB and I will be very happy now to take your questions. We're going to try and group them.

Looking at them as they're coming through, some of them I think we've now answered in the presentation on areas like capital allocation and we mentioned the bid process during the summer, and probably can't say an awful lot more on that. That's...

I agree entirely. In fact, that's what I was going to say.

Here we go. Please don't be offended if I don't include your question.

I have judiciously included every question. I'll do some grouping, and as Greg correctly said, I think we've certainly covered off the capital allocation.

I feel we've given a fairly good description around also the bid, I probably won't do any more on those. Kaine, analyst from Deutsche, lovely to have you with us, Kaine, as always.

Lots of long questions or a long question with lots of complexity in it. Would you consider partially monetizing the Pfizer royalty interest if an attractive opportunity arose, or is the intention to remain fully exposed given the potential upside of the program's progress?

I hope I answered that one in full. We have a default position that we would hold it, but as the asset de-risks over the course of the next sort of 12 to 18 months, then we think there could be opportunities that could be attractive, and absolutely, I always say, as do all the investment team here, everything is for sale in the portfolio at the right price.

If there was an attractive offer, of course we would look at it.

Sorry, I'm sometimes reading the questions

[unclear] just commenting.

I'm sorry. With respect to the portfolio companies, still Kaine, raises of which there's been a lot, do you think this reflects a genuine improvement in the funding environment, or are investors simply becoming more selective and concentrate capital into a smaller number of higher quality assets?

Both and. We're certainly seeing that if you look at the broad statistics across the industry, there are some mega rounds that are attracting huge amounts of capital.

Maybe a good example is fusion. If you look at the analysis of the fusion funding environment, quite a lot of capital has gone into that space.

I haven't got the stats to hand, but it's in the billions. There are three, four, five companies that have identified or have received a substantial amount of that capital with much of a thinner tail.

Interestingly, a stat that we were looking at the other day in our analysis of this sector, and of course, we have our exposure through First Light Fusion, and this is an area of particular interest to them, it's something when they analyze the companies in the fusion space about the level of capital that they believe they still needed to access in order to deliver the commercial milestones, it was something like 4 or 5x the amount of capital that's been raised even in this increased period. I would say it is selective.

The environment for certain of the sectors is strong. We see it as a good validation of the portfolio, and it's a metric that we track and report on for that reason.

The last piece from Kaine, I can probably deal with this. This is related to the 43% of priced funding rounds that were down.

People will notice in the report, we track how many funding rounds are up from the last one, how many are flat, how many are down. It's slightly more in this period.

The question was, should we think of this as a lagging effect from impairments already recognized in prior periods, or do you see pockets of valuation pressure across the portfolio? Funnily enough, I don't want to read too much into it.

By number, it's slightly up. The number that are down has slightly increased, I should say.

Actually, by value, they haven't. Also, it's important to note, I think, that this is true of almost every year we've ever done this, these adjustments are from the last funding round.

Actually, we had already recognized all those in the last set of accounts. Worth saying to run ahead of that, where we think something might be down, we've already factored it into our numbers.

These aren't things that normally catch us out. Moving on a little bit, we've covered pretty well on the Metsera stuff, but a particular question just to clarify.

Question was, was the £27 million uplift milestone related? Nearly all of it actually was valuation adjustment.

There was a small milestone during the period. It was only about £3 million.

The next one back to you, Greg, I think from Paul B. Bulk of transaction activity both in exits and investments looks to be concentrated in health tech and AI.

Can you comment on strength or weakness of activity outside of these areas? In which sectors do you see the bulk of activity in the near term?

That's an interesting one. I would say I've hopefully tried to set out there was quite a breadth both in terms of the larger portfolio companies and the other milestones and progress underneath that across each of the three main areas in which we invest.

I didn't dwell too much on Hysata, for example, which is very much in the clean tech space delivering hopefully its first commercial order for a megawatt-scale plant in South America in early 2027, the first half of 2027. We do see opportunity across all of them.

Interestingly, your question actually is a great observation on what we're seeing in our opportunity set is actually quite a convergence of deep tech, clean tech, and health tech. Many of our opportunities touch those areas in different ways.

Oxa would be a good example. That is a company that has both a software model and a hardware model.

It is clearly deploying machine learning and AI and software into physical environments. In some cases, that is being used to increase efficiency.

In some cases, it's being used for security and defense, for improving resilience. It's touched that.

That's one that probably doesn't touch health tech, for example. That's a trend that we think is interesting and something that our multidisciplinary, science-based approach hopefully gives us a competitive advantage in.

Thank you. Again, just to clarify, this is from John B.

Does the amylin belong to the group? Yes, it does, as I explained in the material and that of IP Group owns a lot of the Pfizer's weight loss franchise.

Quite a few parts, not just the lead program, but the combination therapies and the prodrug and the GIPR. It's quite a wide estate with about six different patent areas, which we originate to IP Group.

Going back to the next one, I would say from Lucas, I think one of our most loyal shareholders, definitely deserves to have your question answered in full, Lucas. Congratulations on strong results.

Given the very positive presentation and very strong underlying performance, we still find it difficult to understand why the stock continues to trade at 40% discount level. This is a question we've talked about many times.

What do you believe are the key reasons for this discount?

We've discussed this a lot, haven't we? That's part of the reason that we have the capital allocation program that we do.

I guess there are broad ways we can reduce the discount over time. The first is simply delivery.

Ultimately, discounts narrow when investors gain confidence that our NAV growth, our portfolio progress, our cash realizations are repeatable rather than one-offs. That's why we've been so focused on the NAV per share growth, the exits, and the portfolio execution.

The second is conversion. We've talked today about the quality of the portfolio, but investors quite reasonably want to see more of that value translated into cash and then, hopefully, into shareholder returns and realized outcomes.

That's why we set that £250 million cash exit target. We felt that was an ambitious target.

That was, I think, at the time, more than half our entire market cap that we said we were going to deliver in cash exits, and it's obviously why capital allocation remains such an important area of focus. Then I suppose the third, we're increasingly focused on the sort of the structure around the portfolio itself, so that obviously includes shareholder returns, which we need to engage on further during the rest of this year, and the development of our third-party capital platform, and how we can maximize the value.

We definitely heard a range of views on that front during the summer, and we're of course now actively considering how best to reflect those views while remaining disciplined and focused on long-term value creation. I think there isn't a single action that closes a discount of this size.

I think that sustained delivery, the thoughtful shareholder-focused capital allocation, continued realizations, that seems to me the most credible route to narrowing it over time.

Yes, and I won't repeat there's a number of other questions about reducing the discount. A question from John L, is Saba a shareholder?

The factual answer, yes they are, they own about 12%. Next question from Bill H, has IP Group's new chairman bought any shares in the group?

Are there any signs yet of how his contribution to the group's effect will be different from the predecessor? You have talked a little bit about this, but just perhaps on the shares?

On the shares, yeah, Michael was very keen to buy shares and bought them, I think, within a week of the end of the offer period. I bought a few more shares, too.

I think that, well, hopefully signifies to shareholders that we believe in the value of the group, believe that there is upside in the share price, and are voting with our capital. I'm very exposed to the IP Group share price, as you would expect as shareholders, it's my number one KPI, obviously.

One from Milosic, who is also an analyst. Nice to have you with us today.

How much M&A appetite do you see for pre-commercial stage biotech companies from big pharma?

I would say there's always active discussion ongoing, and the route to value creation for that bit of our portfolio, we will hopefully demonstrate over the course of the next 12, 18 months, I would say. There's a number of the bigger readouts coming, and there remains significant appetite for sure.

Yep. Four or five more on the buyback, I won't repeat those again.

This is from Sam E, who is also another analyst. Nice to have you with us, Sam.

Thank you. How much visibility do you have on realizations out to end 2027 that gives you confidence to deliver on the 250 realization target?

Perhaps I'll answer that one. The forecasting realizations is quite tricky because it's not like the majority of our stocks are public companies.

You can just make a decision you're going to sell something. A lot of them require also transaction, either the company to float or somebody to buy it.

However, we found we can get relatively accurate on this by looking really as a probability basis. Based on that, you can see up to 15, 20 different things that have varying probabilities.

Overall, I think we're relatively or very confident that we will achieve that target in the next year and simply based upon our acts here forecasting. It comes from a deep knowledge of a large number of companies and understanding relatively realistically what the probabilities of all of them are.

Once you wait for that on our weighting, if you see what you can get relatively accurate forecasts. Our visibility is actually good without being precise, is what I would say.

Looking on down. Sam again, you're back.

Outside of direct AI exposure, to what extent do you see AI as a value creator across the portfolio versus something that creates a risk of disruption? Quite a topical question.

It's being used significantly. We've said that a lot of the value drivers for our businesses are heavily aligned with AI and the use of AI.

This ranges from things like Oxford Nanopore's basecalling software and ability to be able to improve the efficiency of that. We're seeing it being used in therapeutics areas to help around the clinical trial design and analysis.

We're just looking at a new AI-supported materials discovery and development company, for example, that will have to combine a direction of travel that we see, which is sort of combining the digital electrons with the physical atoms and materials in a sort of an iterative loop. I think that's a trend that will be important actually for the next 2, 3 years.

Where are the places where there is a sustainable competitive advantage brought about by a technological advantage that can be paired with or accelerated by the potential for AI. Of course, we're using it significantly within IP Group and using it to improve all aspects of our business very significantly.

I think it's having a profound effect here just as much as it is in the portfolio, and we'll definitely report back more on that over coming months.

There's a couple around governmental support here, which I'll kind of combine. Generally, what's your engagement, if any, with the new Birmingham government and its focus on backing British business?

Can the government help you? As a follow-on, are there any concrete developments from UK government perspective about encouraging pension funds to invest in UK tech?

I would say the trend that began of course, it is interesting. Not to ramble here because try to keep focused, but sort of look back to where a lot of the current things like Mansion House all started.

They were back in sort of 2016 or so, and it's been a number of years for that to have come to fruition. Definitely, one thing we've learned over the years is that government support is not something that we build any investment cases around, but it is becoming an increasingly important tailwind for us.

Over the last 12 to 18 months, we've seen a lot more policy emphasis on innovation, science, and technology as drivers of UK growth, support for scaling companies, and that point definitely around greater engagement with institutional capital, and this sort of recognition that particularly in the UK, more UK businesses need access to growth funding if they're going to remain and grow here. I think to sort of specifically answer the question, there was a recent announcement by a big consortium of pension funds headed up by or endorsed by the UK government and the UK scale-up funds.

That's part of wider efforts to bring pension capital into innovation and trying to address that sort of funding gap. I think and would hope that the relationship that we've started with abrdn also is a way that we can sort of significantly address that gap.

There's a lot of defined contribution, you've got sort of the defined benefit local government pension schemes pool of capital, and then you've got the direct contribution, DC, savers pool of capital. Both present opportunities.

The abrdn one is more on this side of the opportunity, and I think there's good strategic alignment between us and abrdn and the underlying investors about the opportunity here and getting capital into the space. I think sort of overall policy is aligned, maybe more aligned around what we're trying to achieve, and that's building and scaling leading science and technology companies in the UK.

I'm conscious it's 11:00, and obviously, for those that want to go, please do. We've done a fairly good job, we won't be half an hour more.

There's still sort of seven or eight questions. I'll try and answer those or combine where I can, but quite understand if people have to drop off now, which is why I've mentioned that.

There's a very specific question I'll just quickly deal with anyway, because it was a clever observation by Andrew M. Can I clarify if the Hysata valuation at June did not reflect the third-party valuation in its commission?

To tell you the truth, I guess you spotted it hadn't changed much. We actually did choose not to change it.

The valuation actually was slightly higher, but we thought on balance it made sense to probably leave it until the next funding round. We don't always use the valuations as religion that you have to adopt them, but they're a useful guide that we're materially in the right area.

We are. The difference is fairly immaterial.

The valuation was within the range.

It was right at the bottom of the range in the end, we didn't want to change it. Yeah.

A slightly technical question about the valuation of Metsera, do the probability weightings go to 100% once an asset's approved, or are there commercial risks included in that or the peak sales estimates? In short, yes, once it's launched, your probability probably is 100%, but at any time the forecast will change.

There's doubt both about whether you'll get there, when you get there, how big it will be, so that basically sums it up. At any time, you could find the forecasts increasing a lot instead of being increased or vice versa.

Those are really the two things to bear in mind. Certainly, once these things launch, you've eliminated your risk of the trial component.

You're now into, I guess, the risk of market size. Briefly perhaps, question about the most exciting new investments, Greg.

Maybe something you might want to touch on briefly. You could go on for a long time about that, but...

Yeah. I think the ones that I've tried to set out, I can give you a whole list of some of them.

We've got a very interesting health tech Series A business that we just invested into, again, sort of slightly later stage as an opportunity to come into things slightly later stage now, looking at analyzing the health of tissues during surgery. Again, it's AI-powered, enhanced, but enables both sort of human surgeons and robot surgeons to be able to analyze the integrity and health of tissue, which is very important sort of during an operation.

That's a sort of an interesting one. There's the materials, AI-driven materials opportunity.

There's a good breadth. All of those sit at the very early stage in that 53p of NAV per share.

I've tried to highlight the ones that probably provide the nearest opportunity for sort of shorter-term catalysts, the next 6 to 12 months in the presentation. I definitely would say we've had an increase in pace of new investments this year.

I think we've done six or so year-to-date on the balance sheet. We've continued to do plenty in our Parkwalk funds, but I think that six to date is, I think, double what we did last year, if I remember correctly, on the balance sheet.

I think we did about three last year. No, we're definitely seeing opportunities for investment, and I think, with the confidence around realizations, we need to make sure that shareholders' capital is at work.

A couple more and I'm finding quite a lot more are repeating, there's a very specific one about the increase from the £1.13 to £1.17 and asking what is attributable in the portfolio, does it relate to the valuations? Probably worth making the point, it is just generated by the movement in Oxford Nanopore, our share in Nanopore, which has performed strongly since it reported full year results.

We've not done a full revaluation of portfolio at that date, it's just been adjusted by the movement in the public shares, which is mainly Nanopore. May well be there.

I've covered Saba. No, I would say that would cover them all.

I think I'm back to repeats now. We didn't overrun by too much.

There's a couple of small ones on the portfolio, again, whether people are interested in these. Did Oxa or IP Group ever look at or seek to work with Aurrigo?

I'd have to double

check.

Could larimarstat be granted orphan drug status by the FDA? It has previously been granted orphan drug status in an indication called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and IPF.

Of course, that's something that our portfolio companies and we work together on in order to build up this sustainable competitive advantage and hopefully contribute to increased commercial value at the time that we get to sort of partnering and exits. Certainly something that we'd be looking at.

Let me see if there's anything else. There are lots.

To be very transparent, there are a number of questions on differing views amongst our shareholder base and things like that, but I think we've commented, I think, to the extent is appropriate. If we've missed any, apologies.

If you want to reach out, please do, but yeah.

Thanks, Jake. In summary, there's probably three things to highlight.

First, we've continued to deliver against the priorities that I set out at the start of the year: further NAV per share growth, strong cash realizations, and that broad progress across the portfolio. Second, to give comfort to shareholders, we're seeing that increasing external validation of the quality of those portfolio companies, whether that's fundraising, strategic partnerships, or continued progress in the therapeutics areas.

Third, we are very focused on turning that progress into tangible shareholder outcomes, and we will work on that capital allocation piece, but the things like active portfolio management, continued cash generation are very high up our priority list.