Fresh-faced Onward Opportunities (ONWD) has announced its largest capital inflow since launching in March 2023, taking total funds raised since IPO to over £22m. 

In a stock market announcement, the trust confirmed the issuance of 2.55m new shares at 1.7% above net asset value (NAV) for £3.72m.

This marks its first issue of the year, after four issuances last year − all completed at a premium − placing ONWD among the top ten companies on the London Stock Exchange for raising capital in 2025.

The now £43.7m trust was launched just under three years ago by ex-Gresham House manager Laurence Hulse, targeting structural inefficiencies in the UK smaller companies market, with the goal of delivering absolute returns of 15% or more per annum.

Prior to this, Hulse gained experience as deputy manager of Gresham House Strategic, now Rockwood Strategic (RKW), and other small-cap mandates, earning himself Citywire AA and AAA ratings.

Speaking to Investment Trust Insider, Hulse said one of ONWD’s ‘big wins’ over the past 12 to 18 months had been attracting major institutional investors, with Hawksmoor, Rathbones, Charles Stanley, and Callanish Capital all joining the register.

He added that the trust is ‘quietly confident’ it can continue to attract capital to this undervalued segment of the market, hoping to reach the £50m market-cap threshold ‘soon’, £60–65m by the end of the year, and £100m within its first five years.

‘The company’s returns are materially ahead of our 15% per annum target, and these additional liquid reserves allow us to lay down tracks for a continuation of this journey,’ Hulse added. 

The trust’s portfolio manager Dowgate Wealth participated in the subscription, acquiring 514,027 shares, while investment committee member Mark Wharrier subscribed for 68,432. 

Alongside news of the fundraising, ONWD posted a net asset value (NAV) high of 143.7p per share and overall gains of 11.1% in full-year results to the end of December. Total shareholder returns were 7.6%.

Since launch, the trust’s NAV has risen 50.2%, outperforming the FTSE AIM All Share index by 48.8 percentage points and FTSE Small Cap index by 11.2 percentage points. This has positioned it as the third best performer in the AIC’s UK Smaller Companies sector.

Looking back on its brief history, Hulse described launching the trust in the depths of a bear market as ‘quite a bold gambit.’ 

‘Ironically, the most difficult time to raise money is also the best time to be deploying it if you can source it, because the same drivers of a difficult fundraising environment are often the same drivers of under-priced and under-invested assets. Our track record is starting to show that now with those returns,’ he said. 

Alongside capital growth, the manager praised his team for delivering ‘something else that’s been quite hard to do in the UK, which is to actually grow a fund consistently’. 

‘The investment performance and inflows have combined to nearly quadruple the fund since launch. We’re a small team, we’ve done it at a hard time, the hard way — on a rainy night in Stoke, to nick a football idiom,’ he added. 

Hulse also stressed that the unique benefits of ONWD as a permanent capital vehicle make it ideally suited to its UK smaller companies mandate − a niche he described as having been constricted by a ‘doom-loop’ of outflows in recent years.

‘I’m increasingly of the view that this is the only way to do UK small or micro-caps,’ he said. 

Top contributors to the year’s returns included Audioboom, Rent Guarantor Holdings and Pebble Beach Systems, while Synectics, MPAC Group, and React Group were the biggest laggards. 

The trust currently trades on a 4.9% premium and offers no yield. Cash raised from the latest subscription will be deployed into pre-identified pipeline opportunities.