Portugal GV Fund Comparison?

AFIK, seed investments don’t have higher risk adjusted returns than a Series A or B (some analysis says they actually have less). The increased chance of failure generally cancels out the extra returns.

Whether the follow on strategy will increase or decrease the total returns will depend most on how well they pick the “follow ons”. And if you are at all worried about the depth of the startup pool to pick from, the follow on idea makes a lot of sense. Given the hurdles and performance incentives, I’m sure they think the better option is the follow on or they wouldn’t be doing it, so who am I to argue.

Fantastic thread, took me a while to go through all of it, all the thoughts and research are greatly appreciated!
I can see that activity has slowed down, does it mean that most people here are going to make it this year? Anyone researching the topic for the next year investment?
I have been trying to contact the most notable mentions in this thread, Rock capital has scheduled an intro call with me to cancel it 10 minutes before the meeting, as they have closed the fund. Good for them, I guess, but not the greatest impression.
Seems like there are quite a few funds being registered now, so hope to find something a bit more attractive than prime real estate in the bubble market next year.

I think if you want to squeak in this year, the only reliable way is one of the open ended funds, IMGA or whatever the other one was.

I could be wrong but I get the impression the closed funds are slow

@tordude - yes invested in both MedCapital and BlueCrow. They’ve both been great to work with and have seen some growth in the short time. On a related note, we’re still waiting for SEF biometric appointments to open up. Crazy delays and will likely impact acquiring new investors.

Re: Medcap, what growth are you referring to? When I spoke to them a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t think they’d put any of their capital to work yet.

For anyone who is a shareholder of the Explorer IV fund, i created a dedicated thread for discussion: Explorer IV Fund Shareholders Thread

That is actually an important question. Has anyone on the forum answered you? Would be interested on anyone’s take on this.

Question for the forum: Has anyone looked into Aston Gold? It has some favorable items such as 7 years, dividends, lowest fee structure 0.75%/year and even compared to IMGA at 2.38%/year. Granted you can pullout with IMGA being that it is an open fund. Doing an IRR analysis Aston comes on top of IMGA or even Ibris due to dividends and lower cost/fee structure. Appreciate any feedback.

Aston gold is my top choice and I have talked to the fund a few weeks ago. I agree with most of your points and I would not put too much weight on the IRRs, either historical or projected. I also like their relatively long history of asset management. Compared to Blue Crow, my other top candidate, it’s simpler but less sexy. But I am ok with boring in this case.

Great to hear the feedback. I too looked into Blue Crow but seeing it having the longest maturity date going at 10+ years and the fund manager being unresponsive if not uninterested as they are the biggest kid in the block. In fact, Gustavo/Aston fund manager was the most responsive and client oriented manager of all conversations I have had with Blue Crow, Ibris, IMGA, Mercan. Surprised that there hasn’t been much discussions over Aston Gold in the PE space. Looking to sign up with them unless I find something against them from other forum members.

I am also interested in Aston Gold. They have a mix of commercial and residential real estate. So, it is more balanced. Did anyone ask for more detailed financial projections of their individual investments? It’s also good that they are committed to issuing the documentation for US taxpayers to make the QEF election.

Beside Aston Gold, I also am considering Lince’s Navigator II. Lince has a long track record in real estate development. Thoughts about this?

Regarding Iberis-- I used to like them until I discovered their involvement in the Benfica scandal. Kudos to the Nomad Gate member who posted the news article about it in this forum.

Regarding Iberis: I questioned them during their mid-year call about the reporting. They said in full transparency they had no direct involvement and that they were investigated purely as part of the paper trail in relation to Benfica investments, etc
 The Iberis organization and all affiliates have not been implicated in any way regarding this matter.

2 Likes

BC was one of the first, and at this point I imagine they have their hands full dealing with the cash they have, so they may well be uninterested in new clients. Of course you might wish Duarte would just say so, but it seems to be the Portuguese way to just not answer phone calls / emails that don’t interest you. Aston Gold was late to the game relatively. I glanced at it once, but I didn’t find it interesting.

I would be somewhat cautious with that 7 year term at this point. If they close the fund in 7 years, and you don’t yet have your PR/citizenship, things could well suck - and given all of the delays and slowness with SEF (bound to get worse as SEF gets re-organized), any assumption that you are going to get your papers in a mere 5-6 years may well be folly. Flip side, BC has a 15yr term but that doesn’t mean you have to stay in for 15 years - though I expect some investors will. You have to look at exactly how the given fund is going to be operated to determine how long you’re really in. This has been discussed up-thread, I’m sure. Given all that’s going on, I’d recommend going with a fund that has a longer term and a clear exit strategy that includes flexibility on when you actually can get out. At least that’s what I’ve done.

The fee structure doesn’t seem particularly the lowest. It’s a real estate fund, and they intend to make money on rents, basically, hoping for price appreciation. Let’s assume an annual income of ~ 5% from rents, which plus or minus seems market. They take 0.75% off the top for the admin fee. Now they take 50% of that. That 50% appears to be capped at 3% but net-net on your 5% it looks like they’re getting 2.125 + 0.75 = 2.875% on that nominal 5%, which is NOT cheap. Especially given that then they get 20% of all returns above 5%. Versus your normal 2/20 hedge fund benchmark, that doesn’t look very good.

1 Like

Thanks Jeff on your comments.

As for the 7 year term, I am not too worried about that since shareholders can vote to extend the total maturity out to 14 years + the composition of the shareholders are 100% GV investors who invested in Q3FY21 and/or Q4FY21.

Was trying to follow your thinking but there is only two other fees on Aston Gold beyond the subscription.

In fact, simulating the scenario the market would have to appreciate 7%/yearly to provide for the variable fee (ie, performance fee) to be kicked - amounting to 3,234 euro performance gain at maturity. Also mind you that the 20% is a % of the 350K euro investment to the total asset of the fund in this case 350K/33M or 20% of 1.06%. Would be interested in knowing how you arrived at the 50% cap at 3% threshold to see if I missed something.

I’m just going off the astongoldfcr.com web page -

image

depends on what they mean by “limited” I suppose. but I haven’t read the MR.

1 Like

My interpretation of the first bullet is that they will pay out 50% of the fund’s income, up to 3%. That doesn’t mean they will take the other 50% as fees. If they do that, they will have to state that in the fees section in the MR, which I don’t recall seeing.

I’ve decided to go with Iberis as well, splitting between their Greytech II fund and their Portugal Yield Fund II, which purchases real estate primarily by investing in other types of industries and companies that own certain types of real estate, like grocery stores, offices, etc. It provides an early COC yield/distributions unlike the Greytech which invests in middle market companies as a VC fund and gains will be through appreciation/exits, etc of companies. Iberis seems to be a pretty solid outfit, with a couple of its principles having been involved with BCG here in the states, so I think they know what they’re doing. They’ve also been very helpful in helping us try to proceed with the GV application application/process here in the 11th hour. A little nervous because I was told yesterday that they’re about to be up against their hard cap in the Greytech fund so I hope we can get our bank account open and funded in time to make the capital call!

3 Likes

Thanks, are you willing to share what amounts you’re doing in each fund at Iberis? I’m thinking of dividing there as well.

I plan to meet the minimum for Greytech II and they allow you to put the remaining of the €350k into PYF II which is actually less than their stated regular minimum for that fund.

2 Likes

I just confirmed with Gustavo that this is correct. The annual dividend paid out is capped at 3%, anything above this is held back for potential reinvestment not as a management fee. Note however that any dividend is included in the 5% profitability hurdle rate, so if income generated by investments is indeed in the 5-6% range, then the variable fee should be triggered quite easily.