Mercia Asset Management – executive interview

Mercia Asset Management is a regionally focused specialist asset manager. Its stated intent is to become the leading regional provider of supportive balance sheet, venture, private equity and debt capital in transaction sizes typically below £10m.

FY21 was the year Mercia’s business model as a specialist asset manager matured, with NAV per share climbing 24% y-o-y to 40p and AUM rising 18% y-o-y to £940m at year end, of which third-party FUM accounted for over 80% (£764m). It also delivered £37m of realisations in FY21, through four portfolio exits. Given this progress, management has announced revised medium-term targets in its Mercia 20:20 plan.

Based on the group’s increasing scale leading to growing profitability, the performance of its portfolio, its attractive underlying operating model and the initiation of a progressive dividend policy, we believe Mercia remains undervalued.

In this interview, Mercia’s CEO, Dr Mark Payton, talks about Mercia’s FY21 results, the progress the group has made since IPO, the new Mercia 20:20 vision and the outlook for the business.