Vantage: Agronomics co-founder Anthony Chow on investing in cellular agriculture

Anthony Chow has worked with Jim Mellon for over a decade and co-founded Agronomics (ANIC.L, market capitalisation £136m), a listed vehicle that allows investors to gain exposure via public markets to the cellular agriculture market, which Anthony defines as cell culture and precision fermentation companies and enabling technologies. As per-capita consumption of protein grows, cellular agriculture aims to help meet demand while reducing the associated environmental pressures that animal husbandry creates, including carbon emissions and water consumption. In this interview, Anthony gives an overview of the 27 investments Agronomics has made and the size of the opportunity it sees for technology disruption, together with near-term catalysts such as the regulatory approvals it sees in the industry. We discuss the discount to NAV Agronomics was trading at the time of the interview, which Anthony puts down to the sell-off in the broader plant-based listed sector, such as Beyond Meat (BYND.O, market capitalisation $1.0bn) and Oatly (OTLY.OW, market capitalisation $1.4bn) but has not seen valuations in the private cellular area affected in the same way and is confident there will be accretion to Agronomics’ NAV.