Inivata is developing a commercially viable liquid biopsy that will end the need for invasive tissue biopsies for lung cancer patients, which could change survival rates for ever.
Inivata was formed in July 2014 and was seed funded over 2 years with £4 million by Imperial Innovations Cambridge, Innovation Capital, and Johnson & Johnson. Cancer Research UK also retained a stake in the company. This enabled the company to go through the first of its three phases of investment: Learn, Confirm, and Commercialise.
The initial investment delivered proof of concept – taking the initial concept out of the lab and showing efficacy in real patients. In June 2015 the company began pursuing the next round of investment to take it through the Confirm phase.
Inivata needed a second round of funding in order to continue their growth and support their overheads. The Financial Controller, quite normally, was responsible for the day to day functioning of the finance department. Securing additional funding would require an experienced Finance Director who could work on the strategic planning to see the project through.
Amanda Bettinson, COO of Inivata had been aware of the reputation of Numitas’ part time FDs for some time and got in touch to discuss her requirements.
Numitas responded quickly to the request from Inivata and after meeting with them to discuss their requirements, we were able to determine one of our part time FD team who has a huge amount of experience working in finance and had spent over 7 years with GE buying and selling healthcare and biotech companies. Our part time FD has extensive experience in industry so knew how to look at different approaches to capitalization. Importantly, he was also a “perfect fit with Inivata’s culture and values”.
Our part time FD began working with Inivata within weeks of the initial enquiry.
The Engagement
To support the funding round, Inivata were seeking to develop a very robust financial model showing how they would deploy funds in the UK and in the US.
Inivata needed a business model that worked for investors, it had to be sensible and able to stand up to scrutiny. Our Numitas part time FD has worked on both the buy side and the sell side of many M&A transactions, and as a result his skill set was perfect match for Inivata’s requirements.
The relationship with the Numitas part time FD worked very well. He rapidly became a valued member of the team, working very closely with Amanda, handing over the finance piece, and providing daily contact. Our Numitas part time FD worked to get the confidence of management and operational staff very quickly.
The priority was to build a strategic plan for the business, a detailed bottom up forecast that clearly articulated how the funds from the second round were going to be spent. Working closely with staff across the business the Numitas part time FD built a very detailed, robust business plan, accompanied by back-up materials suitable to demonstrate the plan to interested parties.
The plan was presented to the board and taken out to current and potential investors. The model was extensively tested through a rigorous due diligence process by the current investors, and was sufficiently compelling that the investment round was over-subscribed.
Inivata was offered £31.5 million, a significant uplift on what they were looking for. All of the original investors followed their money, and they attracted additional investment from Woodford Investment Management.
Outcomes
Michael Stocum, CEO, says: “Working with Numitas enabled us to tap into an FD who had a high level of expertise at a critical point. We’re now growing fast, so increasingly there will be pressure to get a full time resource on board, but having a Numitas FD working with us part time has made a massive difference to the company.”
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Scintacor (formerly Applied Scintillation Technologies) is a successful British company and the world leader in phosphor and scintillation technology, which allows the conversion of different radiations into light for imaging and detection. The growing demand for their expertise meant that Scintacor decided it was time to look for further investment into the business, which is where Numitas was able to help.
GeoSpock is an extreme-scale spatial big data platform company that provides analytics, visualisation and builds insight for four main verticals: location based mobile advertising, telecommunications, connected cars, and smart cities.
AIM-listed Ubisense was founded in 2002 and is a high growth, Cambridge-based technology firm. Its highly specialist expertise serves 500 customers in 50 countries with enterprise location intelligence products and solutions that help them with their high value manufacturing operations.
For example, its work with automotive firms BMW and Aston Martin and with aerospace giant Airbus, enables specific components and tooling to be located and supplied automatically to a manufacturing location, using state of the art, ultra-wideband radio technology.
Our client is a SaaS business delivering real time data and information to the NHS and helping to manage patient footfall through its mobile app. The company currently turns over £2m and employs some 35 people onshore UK with an outsourced development centre in India.
i-graduate surveys international student opinion about different universities, then tracks and benchmarks the data, delivering comparative insight to the education sector worldwide, in order to help institutions deliver a world class student experience to enhance competitive advantage.
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