WPCT set to record £33m gain on Sensyne Health IPO
Woodford Patient Capital Trust (WPCT) looks set to record a £33m gain and a 45x return on its original shareholding in the UK healthcare AI firm Sensyne Health, as a result of the company’s IPO on the London stock exchange. Sensyne, which was founded and is run by former Powderject CEO and Labour junior minister Lord Drayson, has raised £60m at a market capitalisation of £225m, based on the IPO price of 175p per share.
Earlier this year, Sensyne Health subsumed Drayson Health (formerly Drayson Technologies), in which WPCT had a 19.9% stake valued at 30 June at £734,000 (hence the company had a pre-IPO valuation of £3.7m). WPCT purchased 6.75m shares in the IPO for a total of £11.8m, to maintain its stake at 19.9%, which is now valued at £44.8m – hence its gain of £33m. Lord and Lady Drayson’s combined 39.6% stake in Sensyne (worth £1.4m at the previous WPCT valuation) will become 29.1% as a result of the IPO. This stake now has a value of £65.4m at the IPO price.
Sensyne Health will become WPCT’s sixth largest investment and will mean the trust has become highly geared to area of healthcare AI . It also holds a stake valued at £86m in Benevolent AI, a low-profile UK company that in April disclosed it had raised $115m at a pre-money valuation of $2bn, suggesting a $2.1bn (£1.7bn) post money value.
Sensyne expects to create value by accelerating the discovery and development of new medicines and improving patient care through the analysis and commercialisation of real-word evidence from large databases of anonymised patient data in collaboration with its NHS Trust partners. It has licensed technologies from Oxford University and several NHS bodies. It says it has the right to analyse anonymised patient data in collaboration with three NHS Trust partners (Oxford University Hospitals, South Warwickshire and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital) using proprietary clinical AI algorithms developed by researchers at the University of Oxford.
Sensyne has aquired rights to four digital health software products (SEND, EDGE:COPD, GDm-Health and Support-HF) and a software/device combination product (CleanSpace). GDm Health is a mobile phone-based blood glucose management system for women with gestational diabetes. This product has been subject to a clinical trial in which it was compared with conventional care. The prospectus states that this trial showed “evidence for both patient benefits and a number of cost-saving outcomes.” However, these findings were not based on the primary or secondary endpoints and there was no significant difference on direct health costs, a tertiary endpoint.