Mercia is...

Ambitious, as defined by the team who makes up #OneMercia. But this is within a multilayered context that also speaks to our values, ethos and purpose. When asked to define Mercia, our team curated these words that best describe us, some of which we will bring to life in this year’s Annual Report.

Non-executive Chair's statement

In the midst of the greatest social, economic and geopolitical uncertainty in a generation, Mercia has delivered a second consecutive year of outstanding financial results, thanks to our continuing focus on being the first choice for our investors, investees and employees.

Ian R. Metcalfe - Non-executive Chair

Mercia by numbers

£200.6m

Net assets
2021: £176.0m

45.6 pence

Net assets per share
2021: 40.0 pence

£20.6m

Revenue*
2021: £19.2m

£8.4m

Adjusted operating profit*
2021: £3.3m

£27.4m

Profit before taxation
2021: £34.0m

0.5 pence/share

Proposed final dividend
2021: 0.3 pence/share

£61.3m

Cash**
2021: £54.7m

c.£959m

Assets under Management
2021: c.£940m

* Excluding performance fees
** Including short-term liquidity investments

Accelerating our ESG journey

Our commitment to expand our responsible investment agenda has placed sustainability at the heart of our culture.

Progress in our journey has seen the integration of our ESG framework into our investment analysis and decision-making and this will remain an ongoing priority for all of us.

Responsible investment is in Mercia’s DNA. In 2014, our foundation had a clear purpose: to address the regional funding gap. This gap has, unfortunately, only widened in the subsequent years: London received 60% of all investments into the UK in 2014 and this increased to 75% by 2020. This disparity has only strengthened our resolve to lessen this gap and create value in the communities we serve.

Joanna Bayes - Fund Administrator, VCT Funds

nDreams

For the year as a whole, Mercia recorded fair value uplifts in 10 of our direct investments, the largest being £6.7million for nDreams Ltd.

The virtual reality market has grown significantly against a backdrop of greater hardware penetration at affordable prices and renewed investment impetus by Oculus, Sony and others. nDreams completed a number of important steps in its development with new game releases and its push into third-party publishing.

Watch our exclusive interview with nDreams’ Founder and CEO, Patrick O’Luanaigh.

Netacea Video

Intechnica Group Ltd saw strong progress with a fair value uplift of £2.9million.

After raising £8.5million from new and existing investors in December 2021, Manchester-based Intechnica recently completed the demerger of its exciting bot management cyber security business, Netacea. Mercia now holds stakes in both growing businesses, equal in value to its pre-demerger holding value.

Watch our exclusive interview with the Group’s Co-founder and CEO, Jeremy Gidlow.

Warwick Acoustics Video

Mercia has seen accelerating commercial interaction and developments across our Deep Tech and Manufacturing assets, in particular Warwick Acoustics Ltd.

Midlands-based Warwick Acoustics is engaged in discussions with a wide variety of automotive original equipment manufacturers and has successfully demonstrated its electrostatic acoustic panel technology within a premium marque vehicle for a globally recognised car brand.

Watch our exclusive interview with CEO, Mike Grant.

Delivering a sustainable future

Mercia 20:20

We are one year into our journey towards achieving our ‘Mercia 20:20’ targets and we remain firmly on course. We have exceeded the average annual profit before tax (“PBT”) target and continued to increase our AuM against the backdrop of our significant investment exit performance.

Maurice Disasi - Investment Manager, NPIF

Preliminary results

Mercia’s performance and building momentum is testament to the whole #OneMercia team.Dr. Mark Payton, Chief Executive Officer

Annual Report 2022

Mercia has generated over £60million of pre-tax profits during the last two years.”Martin Glanfield, Chief Financial Officer