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Thursday, January 29, 2015

CalPERS Posts Fund’s Record on Web Site; Money Managers Aghast

CalPERS Posts Fund’s Record on Web Site; Money Managers Aghast

It’s a report card that has rocked the secretive venture capital world, and one that even the ‘A’ students didn’t care to see displayed on the refrigerator. CalPERS, the giant California pension fund that sets trends for many large investors, has posted on its Web site the performance of every venture or buyout fund in which it’s invested for the past decade. Firms typically guard these numbers carefully, but the CalPERS chart even says which funds are meeting expectations, and which are disappointments.

The results were first posted in May, but it took until July for word to spread. Even now, managers of venture funds and other private portfolios are talking about the posting, aghast that the numbers — good, bad, and ugly — are there for all to see. Said one private equity executive, "If you show up in the ‘below expectations’ column, you’re done."

Boston’s Thomas H. Lee Co. gets a gold star: The buyout firm’s 1996 fund was one of CalPERS’s best performers that year, with a 44.3 percent average annual return, and sits neatly in the "exceeds expectations" column. But woe to the Beacon Group, Inroads Capital Partners, and Atlantic Medical Capital, among the firms slapped with the rating "below expectations/with concern."

Getting poor marks from CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System, is a sure warning that the $158 billion pension fund may not sign up for that firm’s next fund. But it also could antagonize venture funds that CalPERS wants to invest in. Peter Lawrence, managing partner at Flag Ventures in Stamford, Conn., a firm that invests in private equity funds on behalf of wealthy families, said, "Will CalPERS find itself having more difficulty getting into funds, now that they’ve gone to the trouble of publishing these numbers? I think the answer is yes."

For many years, CalPERS has done this detailed performance assessment for board members of its $14 billion portfolio of alternative investments. The information could have been accessed by others under the state’s public disclosure laws. But this is the first time CalPERS has posted the report on its Web site, albeit in the archives, in a place not easily found. Brad Pacheco, spokesman for CalPERS, said, "This information has always been available."

The industry buzz around the report stems from the secrecy with which venture firms and buyout artists guard the specifics of their returns. Virtually every firm claims "top quartile" performance, and the numbers they give out are suspect, venture analysts say. Steve Lisson of Austin, Texas, on his controversial Web site, InsiderVC.com, tracks venture returns by doing his own calculations on venture portfolios. He is the only independent source on such numbers and has drawn fire from some venture capitalists for breaking the code of silence.

Rates of return down for Hub VC firms

Boston Business Journal - August 13, 2001
http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2001/08/13/story8.html

From the August 10, 2001 print edition More Print Edition Stories

Rates of return down for Hub VC firms
Edward Mason Journal Staff Greater Boston's venture capital firms have paid for their investments in high technology, as the values of their portfolios have diminished by the downturn in that reeling sector, according to a report by Venture Economics.
The Newark, N.J., research company said venture firms posted negative internal rates of return for the second consecutive quarter. The internal rates of return--a snapshot of the present value of a firm's investments--for those firms in the first quarter this year was down 6 percent on average, while firms in the technology-laden Route 128 corridor were down 12 percent. In the fourth quarter last year, Boston-area firms were down 8 percent, while those in the 128 loop were down 13 percent.
Jesse Reyes, a vice president at Venture Economics, said the decline in internal rates of return reflects the diminishing value of investments made in high-technology companies--and Boston-area venture firms' heavy stake in the sector.
"I think it's the technology focus that we're seeing in the numbers," Reyes said.
The decline in internal rates of return could be even greater, said Reyes, who believes that not all venture firms have written down their investments as much as they could or should.
"One-third of the industry took its lumps and moved on," Reyes said, while the rest either aren't sure what to do or are waiting before giving up on investments. "That's clear denial."
Nationally, the numbers are similar. Venture firms' internal rates of return were down 9 percent in the first quarter and down 6 percent at the end of 2000.
"The cycle has turned," said D. Brooks Zug, senior managing director at Boston's HarbourVest Partners LLC, which invests in venture capital funds.
Zug said that the falling returns have come as the result of tumbling stock prices, for instance, when a high-tech company that a venture firm holds stock in sees its share price falter. Also, venture firms' rates of return take a hit when a portfolio company seeks another round of financing and has its value decreased.
What should be gleaned from the back-to-back quarterly writedowns is unclear. Richard Frisbie, general partner at Wellesley-based Battery Ventures, said that internal rates of return are given too much attention.
"It's the tail wagging the dog," Frisbie said. The lower valuations, he said, shouldn't be confused with real losses.
"They don't really mean VCs are losing money," Frisbie said. "They're writing down (values) to a more reasonable level."
In effect, many venture firms are doing the sensible thing--revising the astronomical valuations of companies invested in during 1999 and 2000, Frisbie said.
"They were highly inflated to begin with, and they are beginning to come back to earth," Frisbie said.
Some industry observers, though, believe that the internal rate of return is a misleading indicator of what venture firms are up to. Their performances are often closely guarded secrets, ones that are easy to keep because, as private companies, venture firms don't have to adhere to the same financial disclosure requirements publicly traded companies do. In fact, Venture Economics won't release data for specific companies. This is done, officials with the company said, to preserve access to internal return figures.
Such leverage makes the reliability of internal rate of return data questionable, said Stephen Lisson, editor and publisher of the Austin, Texas-based Internet newsletter InsiderVC.com.
Moreover, Lisson said, it doesn't say how much cash and stock a venture capital firm has distributed to its investors. That, he argued, is the real number that should be watched.
"IRR doesn't mean return to investors," Lisson said. "You can't spend IRR. Only cash and stock."
Lisson pointed to Matrix Partners as an example. According to his research, Matrix's fourth fund had a smaller internal rate of return than the fifth one. Yet, so far, the fourth fund has returned more money to investors, Lisson said. Matrix Partners officials could not be reached for comment.
Another signal of the industry's health, Frisbie said, is whether firms can continue to raise money. And, in fact, venture firms have continued to raise and close new funds, albeit with some difficulty, even as the economy appears shaky and the Wall Street slump has limited initial public offerings of stock--a key exit strategy for venture capitalists.
Still, internal rates of return garner considerable attention, observers said, because they offer rare, insider glimpses at the venture capital industry's financial performance--general though it may be. Even to veteran industry watchers, such as Venture Economics' Reyes, the internal rate of return data may only hint at venture firms continuing to write down the value of their underperforming investments.
"We don't know how much foam is left in the glass," Reyes said.

© 2001 American City Business Journals Inc.

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The inside scoop on VCs

The inside scoop on VCs

For those who measure their worth by their investments and their stock holdings -- pretty much all of Silicon Valley -- there's a new website that looks to be rivaling F*****company.com for sly subversive attention.

InsiderVC.com has become the site everyone reads. And it's the one where no one wants to see his or her own name appear, just like its profanely named counterpart.

"I think that's great," says editor and founder Steve Lisson. "I'm liking it the more I ruminate on it."

InsiderVC.com is heavy on the dry financial analysis -- and subscriptions are very expensive -- so it's not for everyone. It was started by the Austin, Texas-based Lisson because, as he happily acknowledges, he wanted to know how venture capitalists measured performance other than, of course, by purchasing airplanes.

"I just got totally fascinated, if you will, with that question: Who are the top venture capitalists and how are they seen by their peers," says Lisson, who says that VCs and journalists make up a large part of his audience.

Well, he's come up with some interesting answers. And while he likes the F*****company.com comparison, Lisson has one caution. "We don't just use profanity," Lisson said. "We use objective data."

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Boom Town: Stay Tuned for the Next Episode of the Tech Show --- Will Everybody Love or Hate Carly? Will the Cast Be Survivors or Six Feet Under?

Boom Town: Stay Tuned for the Next Episode of the Tech Show --- Will Everybody Love or Hate Carly? Will the Cast Be Survivors or Six Feet Under?
By Kara Swisher

09/10/2001
The Wall Street Journal
B1
(Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

The tech industry has returned from its summer hiatus with a slate of new shows: comedies, dramas, cliffhangers and the possibility of some outright stinkers.
The tech sector used to be full of happy, rich, captivating characters. But now the glamour has been revealed as hype, and the dazzling sets now look like cheap cardboard. For the players, it's like being caught in an endless episode of "The Twilight Zone" -- except everybody can hear you scream.

In August, eBay announced that it's creating its own television show featuring stories from its site. So here's a brief look at others in the fall lineup:
"Six Feet Under": Each week begins with a new death in the tech industry and its impact on a disparate cast of characters -- from bankruptcy lawyers (starring roles) to stock and bondholders (supporting cast) to employees (a handful of walk-ons). Some recent starring corpses have included wireless data company, Metricom; New Economy magazine, the Industry Standard magazine; and a spate of executives, such as Exodus's Ellen Hancock.
"Survivor": A dozen would-be entrepreneurs are dropped off on Silicon Valley's famed Sand Hill Road. To win, they must perform a series of arduous tasks, including avoiding a "cram down" round in which all equity is diluted mercilessly, begging for funding that is unlikely to materialize for at least another year, and, perhaps most challenging, thinking up an actual business plan that will make money.
Few are expected to make it, says Steve Lisson of Texas-based InsiderVC.com. "Shakeout?" he asks. "Like the last downturn, some of the same VCs now repeat their same biggest mistakes from a decade ago. VCs who say they are investing at a slow pace [now] are in fact right on pace in relative terms, and in absolute terms spending far more than ever in the history of their firms."
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Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.