Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS exceeds £100m landmark

Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) investment manager Deepbridge Capital has today (11 January 2022) announced that it has now deployed over £100m of capital via the Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS fund.

The Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS was launched in 2013 as one of the first growth-focused technology EIS funds, providing private investors with access to a portfolio of early-stage investee companies across various intellectual-property-rich sectors, including energy and resource innovation, hardware technologies and IT-based developments.

With over 30% of the fund having been raised within the past two years, the fund’s capital has been provided UK-wide to 38 companies to date; with investee companies based across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS raises capital from private investors, with approximately 90% of funds raised via financial advisers, and typically fully deploys investors’ capital within a month of receipt of the subscription, which according to research platform MICAP is amongst the quickest in the EIS market.

During the 2020/21 tax year, Deepbridge reported a record year of EIS fund raising, with almost £30m of funds deployed across the Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS and Deepbridge Life Sciences EIS.

In April 2021, Deepbridge secured a £15m commitment from the British Business Investments’ Regional Angels Programme, which is designed to reduce regional imbalances in access to early-stage equity finance for smaller businesses across the UK, to be invested over three years, matched with capital raised via Deepbridge’s investors.

Founded in 2010, Chester-based Deepbridge specialises in providing venture capital to early-stage technology, life sciences and renewable energy companies, currently manages in excess of £210m of funds. In addition to its EIS funds, Deepbridge also manages the Deepbridge Estate Planning Service, which utilises business relief qualifying renewable energy assets to provide inheritance tax mitigation.

Ian Warwick, Managing Partner at Deepbridge Capital, commented: “We are delighted to have reached yet another deployment milestone, which reinforces our belief that our hands-on investment management style and uniquely expeditious speed of deployment is well received by financial advisers and private investors alike. We thank advisers and investors for their continued, and growing, interest in the Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS as one of the UK’s leading tax-efficient investment funds.

“The Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS portfolio is maturing well, which is now being demonstrated by the commercial successes of the investee companies, the significant co-funding our companies are attracting, and the investor exits achieved.  We are currently working with a number of our portfolio companies on potential exit opportunities which will further validate our approach to EIS investing.

“In the last tax year, for every pound of EIS funding raised we were able to support our investee companies in attracting a further two pounds of co-funding.  This is a continuing theme this tax year and evidences the quality of investee companies we are working with.

“Our monthly deployment model should provide investors and advisers with confidence that subscriptions between now and tax year end will be deployed this tax year.”

Martyn Noble, Founder and CEO at Hurricane Modular Commerce Limited added: “We have been extremely grateful for the funding provided to Hurricane by the Deepbridge Technology Growth EIS fund.  This funding has been critical in enabling us to innovate, expand in new markets, create jobs and become a successful international organisation.  The Deepbridge team’s assistance and input has been hugely supportive to our growth and much appreciated.  The Enterprise Investment Scheme is designed to support companies such as ours achieve exactly what we are doing and Deepbridge’s approach is very much in line with the real spirit of EIS.”

Deepbridge currently consists of 55 team members across offices in Chester, London, Edinburgh, Bristol and Queensland, Australia.