When star fund manager Neil Woodford launched his Woodford Patient Capital Trust PLC (LON:WPCT) just over a year ago, he warned investors they’d have to be patient. It was a sentiment he repeated at an investor event in the City last month.
Shareholders are unlikely to have thought they’d have to be this patient though, given Woodford’s standing as one of the UK’s star fund managers, a reputation he built over 25 years at Invesco Perpetual.
But shares in his Patient Capital Trust, which invests in “exciting, early stage and early-growth companies”, are down by almost a quarter since its launch only three years ago.
The stock hit as high 120p shortly after its inception but now sits just below 80p, a slide which led to it being demoted from the FTSE 250 earlier this year. It has also left a lot of investors angry and, on paper at least, out of pocket.
Some big failures
A slew of failures among his investments over the past year or so have all contributed to the fall.
Shares in tech and life sciences incubator Allied Minds PLC (LON:ALM) have halved so far in 2018 as the value of its own investments fell, while Midatech Pharma Plc’s (LON:MTPH) stock has slumped by 75% over the past year.
Woodford has also recently had to bail out Sphere Medical and take it private after the blood gases monitor maker ran out of money.
Going back a little further, Circassia Pharmaceuticals PLC (LON:CIR) saw 65% wiped from its value in one day in 2016 after its cat allergy treatment performed no better than a placebo in a late-stage study.
The losses haven’t been limited to the UK either. Over in the US, a young biotech called Prothena, in which the trust has a 29% stake, also suffered a trial failure with its lead drug, leading to sharp sell-off which has sent the stock tumbling by almost three-quarters compared with this time last year.
Not all losers, though
He has had some big winners, though. Next-generation cancer drug developer Autolus recently listed on the Nasdaq in an initial public offering that valued the trust’s 15.3% stake at over US$150mln – some US$108mln more than it has put into the firm.
Autolus is the biggest holding in Patient Capital Trust’s portfolio, but third-placed Oxford Nanopore and fourth-placed Proton Partners have also made huge strides.
Oxford Nano’s DNA sequencing technology was used to identify a new strain of Ebola during the 2014 outbreak, while Proton recently opened the first proton therapy centre in the UK.
Online estate agent Purplebricks Group PLC (LON:PURP) has also enjoyed a fine run during its time in the Woodford stable, trebling from its January 2016 IPO price, and the lucrative US market is the next target on the horizon.
READ: Sensyne Health valued at £225mln as it readies for AIM IPO
Woodford will be hoping Sensyne Health has a similar level of success when it joins AIM tomorrow (August 17).
The trust owns just shy of 20% of the Oxford-based company, which aims to improve patient care through the analysis and commercialisation of real-world evidence from large databases of anonymised patient data.