Highlights and insights from FY23: featuring Bernard Fairman and Gary Fraser

I think the thing about our business is that no two days are similar, so opportunities arise all the time. You have to grasp them, and you have to see them, you have to grasp them. I think we've got the people to do that. I think we've got the visibility now amongst our peer group to do that. One of the main intentions of the IPO was to give the company more visibility, and we've achieved that very well. I think we're now a well-known name around our peer group and in other parts of the world who'd never heard of us before. This year's highlights have been profitability. We increased it to over 50 million pounds, which has been a real banner number for us being able to achieve that. In addition, we achieved growth in AUM to 12.2 billion, which is a fantastic achievement, partially through organic means and partially through inorganic growth. Several acquisitions during the year, very successful. Okay, we also increased revenues in the year to 119 million pounds, which again is a fantastic achievement and a record for Foresight since it was launched in 1984, so the best ever year.

I think the thing that's most influenced this year's success, which always influences the success of any business, is getting the strategy right. What we're trying to do is invest in technologies, principally renewable infrastructure. So we've got investments in wind, we've got investments in anaerobic digestion, biomethane, fuel, laying, and pumped hydro. So a number of things across the UK, Europe, and Australia, the markets where we see considerable opportunity for growth, where we've got expertise. Developing expertise now at the hydrogen market. We think hydrogen will become an important part of the energy mix. We're certainly one of the leaders in the Western world in terms of the decarbonization agenda and what we're trying to do, and Foresight sees itself at the forefront of that transition. I think we've got a lot of core competencies ahead of the rest of the market. And unlike most of our competitors, we make those available both to institutional investors but also to retail investors through our various retail funds. So if I'm looking at Foresight Capital Management, Foresight Capital Management was created because we saw in ourselves great knowledge when it came to renewable energy infrastructure, and here was an opportunity to pass on significant dividends enlisted renewable energy infrastructure companies. We're now majoring in terms of distribution in the US. We see that it's a good opportunity to distribute our products over the next 12 months. We're looking at investing more in natural capital, so that includes a fish farm in the Nordics, an onshore fish farm. We're also looking at smart farming and also vertical farming as well as more forestry, which we've done already. In terms of the ICG acquisition in Australia, we had a very small footprint there. Geographically, it's materially increased. We're now up over 60 people there, three and a bit billion of assets. So again, it's materially increased our presence in Australia, and that then has created other opportunities including fundraising, new types of investment, and the ability to diversify in Southeast Asia as well. The key reason that I think the acquisitions over the last 12 months have been my key success story is because within the Downing Ventures acquisition, we were a very small player in that market space, so that's really elevated us onto a different level in terms of both the scale that we have in Ventures but the opportunity going forward.

20 exits, offices opened in a number of new districts. Newcastle, we opened an office in Leeds and also one in Dublin. So we've expanded our footprint considerably, expanded our team, seeing lots of deals, making lots of exits, and I think opportunities for growth abound. We think sustainability should be an important part of how every business conducts itself. We're rolling out a tool for our portfolio companies to use. In some cases, we come along to an investment and one of the things we do first is to carefully look at the kind of sustainability metrics of the business and see how we can improve it. And I think it's an important part of what we do to look back and to see a company five years later, let's say when we come to sell it, and to compare the sustainability metrics before and after. There's always a very big improvement, and that is what we're about as much as anything else.

The culture at Foresight is very entrepreneurial, so people can come to us with ideas, and we let them run with those ideas. I'm proud of the fact that we've helped people individually grow with the business over that period of time and really developed a number of people's careers, to the extent that they're now regarded as business leaders within the decarbonization agenda. Originally we got into partnership with the Eden Project. Recently they've just launched one of the first geothermal projects that has been done in the UK for a considerable amount of time, and that's the kind of innovation that they pioneer, and we like to think we pioneer too. So I think what sets us apart as a business is creativity. We encourage it strongly amongst our people. So be as creative, have new ideas, promote your new ideas, and guess what, see them put into practice sometimes as little as a couple of days. Three words that describe Foresight: ambitious, entrepreneurial, and collegiate. So I think an investor would look at us and say they're very profitable, they're growing, and we trust them. So trusted. And finally, I'm really proud that on a daily basis people come to work and make a difference that not only sets us apart from a lot of fund managers, it's also what attracts a lot of people to work at Foresight, and I think that's why we have the best people in the industry.