Hydrogen One Capital Growth (HGEN ) shares have soared 22% after the investor in ‘green’ hydrogen infrastructure confirmed there are no company issues behind its 39% share price crash this month.

Shares in the investment trust had sunk from 67p at the start of March to 40.8p at yesterday’s close, leaving them on a 58% discount to their net asset value (NAV) of 97.3p at 31 December.

They rebounded 9.2p to 50p this morning as the company said it was not aware of ‘company specific factors’ behind the fall.

The slump had reduced its market value to £54m against a total NAV of £125m. Against a one-year average discount of 11%, that gave it a ‘Z-score’ of -3.7, briefly making it the ‘cheapest’ investment company in the UK.  

Launched at 100p in July 2021, after raising £107m, the shares peaked at the end of that year at 119.5p before starting to slide in the sell-off of growth and speculative shares.

The closed-end fund held a capital markets day in the City on 23 February at which its top 10 companies give presentations, many of which called for further state support for a sector struggling with a shortage of capital and supply problems. At the time the shares stood at 72p and attracted the interest of our columnist James Carthew.

In a short statement, fund manager HydrogenOne Capital said seven of the trust’s private investments, representing 89% of its portfolio, were ‘revenue-generating, producing equipment and technology solutions for clean hydrogen production’, with an aggregate revenue of £33m in 2022, an increase of 110% from 2021.

The company’s valuations imply a forward revenue multiple of six times for 2024, which is 40% lower than the multiples used by listed hydrogen companies.

It said the value of the company’s private portfolio was ‘reviewed and approved by the board’ on a quarterly basis and annually by an auditor.

‘The private portfolio is valued using either the discounted cashflow method, or a combination of the discounted cashflow method and the price of recent investment,’ said the board.

‘The discounted cashflow valuations are also benchmarked against listed peer group valuations in the company’s valuation process.’

It said the average discount rate to value the cash flows for December 2022 was 12.9%, slightly above the 12.5% of a year earlier.

Lastly, HGEN said the company and its investments did not have any exposure to Silicon Valley Bank which collapsed this month. It will publish its annual results on 4 April with a first quarter and NAV update following in May.