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4
Foresight 4 VCT plc
02
Chairman’s Statement
I Investment Activity
The level of new investment activity has started to pick up
again, with two new investments being made totalling
£500,000: £250,000 in Lynwood Group Holdings and
£250,000 in Silvigen. This is in line with Foresight’s
increasing focus on investing in the environmental
infrastructure and sustainable sectors.
Lynwood is an established business in the plastic building
products market in the UK and has made the transition to
using waste plastic streams as its raw material. Lynwood
has acquired a small business with specialist expertise in
manufacturing wood profile and wood replacement
products from waste plastic and it is now one of the best
equipped plastic recycling manufacturing operations in
the UK. The company is well positioned in a growing
market for recycled and sustainable products such as
wood replacement, which offer considerable economic
and environmental advantages.
Silvigen has positioned itself to supply the urgent biomass
fuel needs of the UK power generation sector and the
developing industrial heat sector, both of which are driven
by a number of regulatory incentives.
The Company made seven follow-on investments totalling
£1,311,961: Closed Loop London (£503,333), Advanced
Visual Technology (£300,000), O-Gen (£210,000), The
Bunker Secure Hosting (£118,700), Global Immersion
(£66,670), Vectorcommand (£60,000) and Oled-T
(£53,258).
Advanced Visual Technology (AVT) required ongoing
funding while progressing its sales process. After the
period end AVT was sold to Oracle for an undisclosed
amount. A further investment was made into O-Gen in
April to fund the latest stage of the company’s biomass to
energy plant. The plant has already produced some
electricity with full commissioning expected later in 2008.
The Bunker Secure Hosting is experiencing strong
demand for its ultra secure IT hosting services and is
currently planning for a substantial increase in its capacity.
Closed Loop London has completed its first plant in
Dagenham and is in the early stages of developing a
second plant in the north-west of England.
Global Immersion and Vectorcommand required further
investment due to a shortfall in working capital as a result
of poorer trading, whereas the investment in OLED-T was
to finance the company on the anticipation of an
impending strategic investment by a large chemicals
company. Unfortunately, the strategic investment did not
materialise and OLED-T’s IP was sold for €450,000.
I Realisations
Utarget, a provider of Internet subsite advertising, was
sold to Fox International in March 2008 for total proceeds
of £1,952,800 compared to an original cost of
£1,000,000. This represented an uplift of almost 100%
on cost in little over a year, following the original
investment in December 2006.
Additionally, further proceeds of £150,310 were received
from the ongoing sale of the assets of The Casella Group.
A final payment from the completion of the liquidation
process is expected in the next few months.
I Net Asset Value
The net asset value per share as at 31 August 2008
decreased to 104.4p compared to 110.2p as at
29 February 2008.
I Dividend
The Company’s dividend policy is to aim to distribute to
shareholders a steady flow of dividends from income and
realised capital gains. Reflecting recent realised gains, an
interim dividend of 5.0p per share for the year ending
28 February 2009 will be paid on 19 December 2008,
making 17.5p per share of cumulative dividend payments
in the last three years. The ex dividend date will be
10 December 2008 and the record date will be
12 December 2008.
I Valuation policy
Investments held by the Company have been valued in
accordance with the International Private Equity and
Venture Capital (IPEVC) guidelines developed by the
British Venture Capital Association and other
organisations under which investments are valued, as
defined in the guidelines, at “fair value”. Ordinarily,
unquoted investments will be valued at cost for the