Innovacorp, the Nova Scotia government’s early-stage venture capital agency, invested a total $2.5 million in 19 companies in 2019-20, a drop in dollar terms of 60 percent from the previous fiscal year.

The provincial Crown corporation, whose fiscal year ends March 31, released its annual Accountability Report recently outlining its activity, which was impacted by three deals being delayed until 2020-21. Previous Accountability reports showed Innovacorp’s investments totaled $6.3 million in 16 companies in 2018-19 and $7.9 million in 16 companies in 2017-18.

It should be noted that Innovacorp is a limited partner in Concrete Ventures, an early-stage fund run by Patrick Hankinson, which ramped up its funding in 2019-20, and backs the Volta Cohort program.

Atlantic Canada experienced an overall drop in early-stage funding in calendar 2019, then the pandemic created concerns about companies suffering a cash crunch. Innovacorp and other organizations have stepped up their investments since the pandemic struck. (See accompanying article.)

“While Innovacorp made a higher number of investments than anticipated, the total dollar invested was less than the $6.5 million expected (in 2019-20),” said the Accountability Report. “The variance is mainly a result of three large expected deals being delayed until the next fiscal year.”

See Also: Innovacorp Accelerates Deals in Last 6 Months. 

The Accountability Report is an important document because it always shows some investments that were never disclosed publicly.

The following are the investments made through the Nova Scotia First Fund, Innovacorp’s main investment vehicle:

In the last few years, Innovacorp has made smaller investments in partnership with the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (backing leading graduates of Propel’s Incite program) and Venture Grade, the Saint Mary’s University student-run VC fund. In 2019-20, those programs amounted to $260,000 being invested in these 11 companies:

The Accountability Report notes that the companies that make up its portfolio collectively raised $71 million, which includes ABK Biomedical’s C$40 million deal. “Given the larger-than-expected amount of funding raised by Innovacorp’s later-stage portfolio companies, there was less of a need to participate in those funding rounds,” said the report.

It added that the portfolio companies in 2019-20 employed 816 people, had a payroll of about $61 million, and generated revenues of $47.3 million, all representing increases over the previous year.

Although Innovacorp had hoped 30 percent of its seed-stage companies would complete a Series A financing in 2019-20, it admitted none has so far. (The report does not define “seed stage” or “Series A”.) It predicts this goal will eventually be met, but it will take longer than expected – especially given that the pandemic is impacting private funding.

The Accountability Report also reveals most funding totals for Innovacorp’s non-dilutive programs. Adding up the totals listed in the report (and additional information from the Innovacorp press office) indicates Innovacorp distributed more than $1.9 million, mainly through the following programs:

Editor's note: By coincidence, Innovacorp released its annual Accountability Report near the same date on which we had arranged an interview with its Investment VP Andrew Ray. The two subjects complement one another, but are two separate stories, so we decided to run them side by side. Innovacorp is a client of Entrevestor.