The Lemon Fool

Not sure if I'm missing something here but this time of year the seasonal VCT offers are usually being snapped up, though the appetite appears much more restrained at present.
Quite a few offers but Maven, looking for £15m is only half subscribed, despite emails from wealth club saying it would go fast, (which it has done previously), Amati has had an offer since end Oct, not yet up to £9m, Albion still open for 2 funds despite write ups/emails from WC, & even the dreaded mega offering from Octopus Titan is just over half taken, which from memory is someway behind where it was this time last year.
Unicorn & Northern still to come but does this show investors are being much more cautious than previous years as the effects of new rules filter through ?
If that is the case then it is surely good for investors as 2019 nav performance in the sector was certainly less than stellar, with "brexit" being mumbled at many agm's, chairman's reports. A few quieter years of fundraising could augur well for the market as it may help the often very well paid managers to go back to their knitting.

I may make this my second year in a row with no VCT purchases and they will be the only two years since VCTs started some 25 years ago!

I was interested to see that Pembroke are about 90% subscribed, far more than they have achieved in previous years so they must be doing something right. I am happy holding my existing 'B' shares and would consider more sometime in the future.

Years ago I used to have ProVen but I haven't heard anything about them for a while. I would have thought their style was suitable for the current rules.

I expect that the best offers will still go pretty quickly. Most of the Mobeus VCTs are already taken. Ditto Albion. I happen to agree that the ProVen VCTs are well suited to the current rules and that they have had to adapt less than the likes of Baronsmead, Northern and Mobeus.

ProVen are the last of what I consider to be the leading VCTs to launch this season, but we know that they intend to. I preferred it when they announced earlier in the season so that we all knew where we stood. If they are in the final knockings of closing a material deal, that would be one reason for holding back on the launch.

P.S. Northern have formally launched their planned offers this afternoon. I don't think it will take long for them to fill up. I have already done my bit.

S. Telegraph (paywall) saying today that £250m has been invested in VCTs so far this tax year, 4% more than in 2018/9 and that almost a quarter of this investment (£60m) has come since the election.

I have just done my bit, with Northern and Octopus Titan, though with some reluctance and considerable foreboding about how these investments will fare.

This is proving to be a good year for Pembroke in subscription terms.
Wealth Club has them at £19.9m subscribed and last week they announced that they are using £10m of their over-allotment facility to let them take up to £30m in total.

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/PEMV/14385896.html

ProVen confirm their plans for an offer but no update on when. From this morning's quarterly update for PVN:-

ProVen VCT plc and ProVen Growth and Income VCT plc (together the “Companies” and each being a “Company”) announced on 11 November 2019 their intention to launch a combined Offer for Subscription to raise up to £20 million (with each Company intending to raise up to £10 million) by way of an issue of new ordinary shares in the Companies, with an over-allotment facility of up to a further £20 million in aggregate (being a facility of up to £10 million for each Company).

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/PVN/14391913.html

Kidman wrote:This is proving to be a good year for Pembroke in subscription terms.

I'm not surprised - I once again dipped my toe into Pembroke this year, although I've got to say that its trendy constituent companies are not my cup of tea.
However its NAV has held up reasonably well, so it looks like the management know what they are doing, and it certainly brings diversity to my VCTs.

scotia wrote:

Kidman wrote:This is proving to be a good year for Pembroke in subscription terms.

I'm not surprised - I once again dipped my toe into Pembroke this year, although I've got to say that its trendy constituent companies are not my cup of tea.
However its NAV has held up reasonably well, so it looks like the management know what they are doing, and it certainly brings diversity to my VCTs.

Isn't this just the latest new VCT to start to make a name for itself? As it builds that track record, hitherto-cautious investors start to treat it as a regular mainstream VCT, and it crosses that threshold to Established status.

Octopus Titan was a relatively recent fund to establish itself from new, and look where they are now!

Talking of newcomers, isn't Blackfinch genuinely new this year? Not to mention Puma's first evergreen offering.