MIG Capital continues to grow after excellent financial year 2021
- After high pay outs in 2021, total pay outs to MIG investors since foundation exceed the one-billion-euro threshold for the first time.
- Successful exit of intensive care company Hemovent
- Portfolio expanded with investments in Zadient Technologies, Creative Balloons, iOmx and Mimi Hearing
- MIG Fonds invested total of 55 million euros in new and existing portfolio companies in 2021
- MIG Fonds 16 closed with record results at the end of 2021
- With further exits, progress of portfolio companies, new investments and the placement of MIG Fonds 17, the success story of the past years is expected to continue
Munich, 27 April 2022
MIG Capital AG, one of Germany’s leading venture capital firms, and its funds (MIG Fonds) report another excellent financial year. In the past year, a total of 172.5 million euros was distributed to MIG investors from the sale of investments. This strong performance was again driven by BioNTech, but also by the successful sale of portfolio company Hemovent to MicroPort Surgical BV for a total price of up to 123 million euros. Total payouts since the establishment of the first MIG Fonds thus increased to around 1.1 billion euros.
Michael Motschmann, General Partner of MIG Capital AG, noted: “Due to the strong performance of our portfolio, investors in several MIG funds were again able to benefit from substantial pay outs. A significant contribution to this came from the sale of our stake in BioNTech. Numerous MIG investors participated in the tremendous success of this company via MIG funds and were among the first investors in BioNTech. The progress made in our portfolio has also been very encouraging, with many operational milestones, successful exits and promising new investments. We are therefore confident to continue our growth trajectory in 2022.”
During the 2021 fiscal year, MIG Capital AG added new, highly innovative companies to its portfolio of managed funds:
- In February 2021, MIG Fonds no. 4, 6 and 16 invested in the French deep-tech company Zadient Technologies as part of a seed financing. Zadient specialises in the production of silicon carbide (SiC) as a building block for power semiconductors. This follows MIG’s successful investment in Siltectra, which was sold to Infineon in 2018.
- Also in February 2021, MIG Fonds 16 made an initial investment in the medical technology company Creative Balloons as part of a 15 million euros growth financing. Creative Balloons focuses on the research and manufacturing of high-performance catheters for use in intensive care medicine.
- In October 2021, MIG Capital led the 65 million euros Series B financing of biotech company iOmx Therapeutics with MIG Fond 16. The financing will allow iOmx to clinically validate its innovative immune-oncology target discovery platform.
- As part of a Series B financing, MIG Fond 16 made its first investment in Mimi Hearing in December. The 22.5 million euros funding round was led by MIG Capital. Mimi Hearing is developing a technology platform for hearing wellbeing and audio consumption.
These new investments, along with refinancing rounds in the existing portfolio, brought the total volume invested by MIG Fonds in the 2021 fiscal year to around 55 million euros (previous year: 46 million euros). In 2021, MIG Fonds and its co-investors raised a total of around 275 million euros for MIG portfolio companies (previous year: 170 million euros).
Many of the MIG portfolio companies made significant operational and commercial progress in the past year. In July, Vienna-based AFFiRiS AG sold its portfolio of therapeutics targeting Parkinson’s disease to the publicly listed Swiss company AC Immune SA for 58.7 million US-Dollars in shares. And in December 2021, AFFiRiS announced a license agreement for its PCSK9 program for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia with China-based biotechnology company Frontier Biotech, which will further develop and commercialize this program in Greater China.
IQM Finland OY was able to open its first quantum computer manufacturing facility in Finland in 2021. In addition, an important milestone on the way to a 54-qubit quantum computer was achieved with a ready-to-operate 5-qubit quantum computer. The German-Finnish company is also profiting from more than 40 million euros in funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for the advancement of quantum computer technology in Germany. Led by IQM, the project will integrate a quantum computer into the Leibniz Computing Center (LRZ) of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
Fundraising for the new MIG Fonds 16 closed at the end of the year at around 148 million euros. In 2021 alone, investors from Germany and Austria decided to invest 110 million euros. Since 2005, the 16 MIG funds to date have thus raised 1.2 billion euros for investments in new, innovative deep tech and life science companies. MIG Fonds 17, which is in line with MIG’s proven successful investment strategy, has been approved by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), and fundraising has started.
Michael Motschmann for this current year: “We see a strong deal flow in 2022 and remain committed to our strategic focus on young innovation leaders with breakthrough products based on cutting-edge technology and a compelling management team. The strong performance of many portfolio companies, which are now reaching more advanced stages, opens up attractive exit options. Finally, the broad expertise of our team, which includes engineers, physicists, biologists, and lawyers, gives us an important advantage in analyzing and evaluating companies in the biotech and deep tech sector. Even more crucially, we can identify the exceptional companies that combine both. Our experience with the unicorn BioNTech and other successful companies from our portfolio shows that convergent business models that combine two or more independent technologies into something truly innovative are key to successful investment decisions.”