This month we have been to the Williams F1 museum and workshop – all in the name of investment research – and we loved it!!
Foresight are an investment company and they have partnered with Williams Advanced Engineering to give some investments for clients wanting technology and something “fun”.
Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) came out of the Williams Formula 1 Racing Team and they have applied their tech to tanks, chemical weapon detection, supermarket fridges and much more.
They design transformative technologies that positively impact the world.
How does a fridge transform the world, I hear you ask? They have designed components to be added to supermarket fridges so that much less cold air leaves the fridges. Therefore, you do not need to use as much energy to cool the fridges as it is being recycled back into them, and the supermarket aisles are not as cold anymore. Simon and I now comment when we are in supermarkets as to whether or not they have these devices – sad I know!!
So how can your money get access to this cool tech?
WAE and Foresight have joined together to bring clients a VCT (Venture Capital Trust) and an EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme). They have a joint investment committee and they use money invested with them to invest in companies that meet the above description of transformative tech. For a company to get money from them, both companies have to agree. They invest in early stage disruptive technology companies, focusing on a 10 x return.
So far they have invested in some cool companies such as Refeyn – a life science company that weigh molecules with light, Codeplay that was sold to Intel for a 16 x return and Hololens.
One company that came and talked to us has been started by some Physics Professors at Oxford University. They were crazy clever, so I did not ask any questions, and their company has found a way of doing simulations that take hours or days rather than months or years. I am not sure that I can describe it in any more detail as it was so complicated, but truly disruptive.
This all sounds super fun doesn’t it?! So what is the catch?
Well, these are high risk investments. They are all early stage companies and so the risk is that you could lose all of your money. I think that it is unlikely as they are chosen by Foresight and WAE, but possible.
Those friendly chaps in the Government want companies like this to be helped to do well as that way HMRC collect more tax money, so if you invest in a VCT you get 30% of your money back in tax relief. Â So if you put ÂŁ10,000 into one, you get ÂŁ3,000 back on your tax return. Sweet!!
You need to invest for 5 years to keep your tax relief, so don’t think of this as a short term investment, and when the VCT starts paying out dividends, which it can do when they start selling companies within in, then the dividends are tax free.
Some VCTs are already paying dividends, such as the Octopus Titan VCT, which is more established and has been running for quite a while now. However, this VCT is young and so hasn’t started paying them out yet, and probably won’t for a few years.
I have put some of our money into this one as it is really exciting and I am a high risk investor. They are not right for everyone, but they could form an interesting part of your portfolio.
