LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Cellular agriculture investor Agronomics said in an update on Friday that its unaudited net asset value at quarter-end on 30 June was 15.27p per share, including uninvested cash of £51.5m.

The AIM-traded firm said its net assets stood at £148m, including investments of £98m.

It said the share price of 16p at the close on 30 June represented a premium of 5.75% to the net asset value per share.

The average premium to net asset value per share over the last 12-month period was 62.22%.

Under IFRS, the company's unquoted investments were carried at cost, or the most recent priced funding round.

"Agronomics has continued its investment activity in cellular agriculture this quarter, as well as having formed a new company, Liberation Labs Holdings - a contract manufacturer for food technology precision fermentation," said chairman Richard Reed.

"We already have what we believe are sector leaders in cultivated meat and seafood production, where cell culture is the best suited technology to produce industrial quantities of meat at a much greater efficiency when compared with conventional agriculture."

Reed said the company would continue to support the cell culture companies but, moving forward, it intended to further increase its exposure in precision fermentation and its enabling technologies, given the near-term commercial opportunities, coupled with limited technology risks.

"Whilst global venture funding aggregated across all areas has experienced a 23% decline quarter on quarter in the second quarter of 2022, reflecting the slow-down given volatile market conditions, cellular agriculture as a sector remains promising because of the significant environmental, social and governance tailwinds, intrinsic excitement and near-term uplifts, all of which will benefit the Agronomics portfolio."

At 1323 BST, shares in Agronomics were up 6.25% at 17p.

Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.

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