Tern Plc (LON:TERN), the company focused on value creation from Internet of Things (“IoT”) technology businesses, has today announced that its portfolio company, Talking Medicines Limited has completed a £1.59 million syndicated equity fund raise, with £1.19 million being invested by Boston based life science investor, Mark Bamforth, and existing investors, including Scottish Enterprise and SIS Ventures, and £0.40 million from Tern, at a significant valuation uplift from the previous book valuation of Tern’s holding.
Highlights
· Talking Medicines has raised a total of £1.59 million principally to support its planned expansion in the USA
· Tern has invested a further £0.40 million in Talking Medicines’ equity in the current funding round
· Tern’s holding in Talking Medicines’ equity is now 23.8% (previously 23.4%)
· The unaudited book valuation of Tern’s holding, valued at the Talking Medicines Fund Raise valuation, increases from £0.86 million as at 30 June 2021 to £1.79 million (after including the current investment of £0.40 million), representing an uplift of approximately 62% on the amount invested by Tern in Talking Medicines in November 2020
Commenting Al Sisto, CEO of Tern plc, said:
“We are very pleased to be announcing this fund raise for Talking Medicines, which provides them with an important new investor and funding for their continuing development and in particular their planned expansion into the US, with a view to accelerating their recurring revenue growth. Talking Medicines has made very significant progress since Tern first invested in November 2020, particularly with the continuing roll out of their PatientMetRx® technology platform.
“The Talking Medicines Fund Raise is in line with Tern’s model to undertake syndicated investment rounds for our companies, providing funding from third party investors and independently validating significant increases in value for Tern. We first invested in Talking Medicines in November 2020 and in just over a year have seen the value of our holding show an approximate 62% uplift to the amount originally invested by Tern.
“Following a strong end to 2021 when we introduced an important strategic investor to Device Authority to help them further strengthen their leading market position and undertook a value enhancing syndicated funding round for Konektio, the Talking Medicines Fund Raise provides a great start to 2022. In particular, we are focussed on helping our portfolio companies continue to grow their monthly recurring revenues, the key metric that we believe will be used to value them on exit, allowing us to maximise the possible value for our shareholders at the appropriate time. We have no defined time horizon for holding our portfolio companies, but are constantly reviewing all options for them with a view to maximising shareholder value. I look forward to providing further updates in due course.”
Talking Medicines Fund Raise
Prior to the Talking Medicines Fund Raise, Tern had a holding of 23.4% in Talking Medicines and as at 30 June 2021, the date of Tern’s last published book valuation, this holding had an unaudited book valuation of £0.86 million.
Following the Talking Medicines Fund Raise, in which Tern has invested a further £0.40 million, Tern’s holding in Talking Medicines has increased to 23.8% (before any dilution on exercise of any future Talking Medicines employee share options), but this holding now has an increased unaudited book valuation of £1.79 million. Including the Talking Medicines Fund Raise, Tern has invested £1.26 million in Talking Medicines since November 2020.
The investment by Tern in Talking Medicines was funded from the Company’s existing cash resources. As at 31 December 2021, Tern had an unaudited cash balance of approximately £2.0 million.
Talking Medicines Background
Talking Medicines, based in Glasgow and London, and with a recently opened US office, uses advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing technologies to provide pharmaceutical companies with real-time data intelligence.
Through a combination of artificial intelligence and industry expertise, Talking Medicines has developed a next generation data platform, PatientMetRx®, to deliver social listening for pharmaceutical companies. Its PatientMetRx® platform is driven by artificial intelligence models that use machine learning and natural language processing to scale real world data collection to a scale that is transformational versus traditional research. By structuring and translating the patient’s voice into a Patient Confidence Score (PCS), Talking Medicines helps pharmaceutical companies understand patient confidence in their medicines, allowing marketing to be targeted and ultimately with the goal of delivering better patient outcomes.
The company is focusing this year on expanding its PatientMetRx® subscription base amongst pharma brand teams and pharma marketing agencies. Talking Medicines has established a new office in New Jersey, USA, to support these plans with a view to recruiting a US-based sales team.
The business has been awarded a number of accolades, being included in the First 100 UK Digital Health Companies by the UK Government’s Department of Trade and Industry. The company has 35 employees and the headcount has doubled over the past year.
For the 16 month period ended 31 December 2020, the latest filed financial statements, Talking Medicines recorded an increase in retained unaudited losses of £305,605 and at that date had unaudited net assets of approximately £1.13 million.
Further information on Talking Medicines may be found at:
Commenting, Talking Medicines CEO, Jo Halliday, said: “2022 promises to be a big year for Talking Medicines with this new investment. Having scaled up our operations and formally launched our PatientMetRx® technology platform, we have now got our sights set on expanding in the US pharma market, providing brand teams and agencies with a new way of understanding what patients are really saying and feeling about their medicines. We believe that the pharmaceutical industry will go through seismic change this year and our actionable patient insights will be transformational for the industry. Our new office in New Jersey provides the ideal base for us to build relationships with customers, acquire new leads and drive revenue growth.”
