Woodford Patient Capital is relatively diversified in terms of number of holdings (85), though concentrated when it comes to individual stocks - the top 10 holdings account for 62.46% of NAV. This is very much a bottom-up, growth-orientated approach with Neil’s aim being to invest in early stage/young companies and hold them for the long term. As such, while some of the portfolios holdings do feature in Neil’s highly-popular UK equity income funds, Woodford Patient Capital still only has 14% crossover with CF Woodford Equity Income. The reason behind launching the trust was that Neil and the team felt there are many exciting, disruptive companies in the UK with strong intellectual property, but historically few had been turned into commercial successes thanks to a lack of appropriate capital investment. As such, the investment strategy revolves around finding early stage/early growth companies and, by providing long-term ‘patient’ capital, helping those businesses fulfill their potential. The portfolio is run with no reference to a benchmark, with the process heavily reliant on the team’s own fundamental company research. Also, given the trust’s investment objective and therefore the type of companies it invests in, a cornerstone of the process is to meet and closely work with company management to try and help drive shareholder value. The manager invests in companies where he believes there is significant potential upside, usually through proprietary intellectual property, and often invests alongside experienced players in this field such as IP Group, Allied Minds and Imperial Innovations. This process is borne out in the types of companies the trust holds, as a significant portion of the portfolio is in unquoted stocks. Despite the long-term growth focus, however, the trust also includes a significant weighting toward mid/large cap companies. From a sector point of view, the trust is heavily biased towards healthcare/biotech companies. Indeed, healthcare makes up 66.14% of the portfolio, with the next largest sector exposures being financials at 26.77% and technology which has doubled from 7.12% to 14.77%. As with Neil’s highly popular equity income funds, Woodford Patient Capital has next to no exposure to commodity-related stocks.