Invesco Perpetual’s Mark Barnett has cut his stake in troubled tech and life sciences ‘incubator’ Allied Minds (ALML).
The move follows a painful week for the company, which commercialises intellectual property from universities, after it announced on Wednesday that it will discontinue funding for seven subsidiaries, accounting for $146.6 million of its assets. Allied Minds will look to sell or liquidate these subsidiaries, but said the value would be marked down in its full-year results.
Following the announcement, Barnett sold shares in Allied Minds across the Invesco Perpetual High Income and Income funds. Invesco’s Powershares division, which specialises in exchange-traded funds (ETFs), also reduced its position in Allied Minds.
In total, Invesco sold 2.5 million shares, worth £4.3 million at today’s 172.9p share price, bringing its total stake down to 58.5 million shares, which equates to 25% of Allied Mind’s share capital. Barnett inherited these positions from his predecessor on the funds, Neil Woodford. He has been selling these down since May 2015 due to concerns about Allied Minds’ valuation.
Woodford, Allied Minds’ largest shareholder, has faith that the company will weather this storm. He suggests that ‘short-term noise’ and share price movements are distracting investors from the longer term opportunities available in the intellectual property commercialisation sector.
‘By crystallising value in businesses that are not demonstrating the progress hoped for, Allied Minds can focus more aggressively on the companies that are rapidly progressing towards their commercial goals and reallocate capital towards new ideas,’ Woodford explained.
‘In this respect, I believe the strategy is sensible and will help to accelerate the creation of long-term value for shareholders,’ he added.
The star manager has a 1.8% holding in his £9.7 billion Woodford Equity Income fund . This equates to an 18.4% stake in the FTSE 250-listed business.
Allied Minds also sits in the top 10 positions of his Woodford Patient Capital (WPCT ) investment trust, which holds 3.2% of its assets in the company.
GIC Private, a sovereign wealth fund for the Government of Singapore, bought an additional 1.2 million shares in Allied Minds following the announcement. This brought its total stake up to 19.4 million shares, equating to 8.3% of the share capital. GIC describes itself as one of the world’s largest investors with $100 billion in assets.