Portfolio Update - Bright Ascension Limited

Capital for Colleagues plc / EPIC: CFCP / Market: AQSE / Sector: Financials

22 August 2023

CAPITAL FOR COLLEAGUES PLC

(‘Capital for Colleagues’, ‘C4C’ or the ‘Company’)

PORTFOLIO UPDATE – BRIGHT ASCENSION LIMITED

Capital for Colleagues, the investment vehicle focused on opportunities in the Employee Owned Business (‘EOB’) sector, is pleased to announce a further update in respect of its investee company, Bright Ascension Limited (‘BAL’).

BAL is an industry-leading space-software technology provider, offering unique off-the-shelf software products and solutions for the delivery of space-based services, both on spacecraft and on the ground.

Capital for Colleagues is pleased to announce that BAL has been selected to lead onboard and ground software development for the 3-year OS2-VOLT mission. The OS2-VOLT mission has a total value of around €12.0 million and is designed to evaluate and test radical new real-time techniques and technologies in low Earth orbit, aiming to demonstrate products and services within a Versatile Optical Laboratory for Telecommunications.

As announced on 30 May 2023, the OS2-VOLT mission is being led by Craft Prospect Limited (‘CPL’), another C4C investee company, on behalf of the Telecom Directorate of the European Space Agency (‘ESA’) under the ScyLight programme.

BAL expects that HELIX, the end-to-end suite of software products it is launching later this year, will form the foundation for the OS2-VOLT partnership. The ESA/CPL project will include an extensible and customisable downstream software platform to provide high-level tasking and monitoring of the space system at the level of delivering data and services to a number of anchor customers. BAL will also be leading software development for the upstream side of the mission, leveraging products for flight, test and operations software.

Peter Mendham, BAL’s CEO, commented:

“Over the past 11 years we have successfully validated our innovative engineering in the context of over 40 missions and we are now expanding our expertise and understanding of the upstream software technologies to downstream services to provide high-level tasking and software-defined flexibility to the complete space system, from onboard payloads to in-cloud data processing. This ability to connect and optimise integration between building/operating a spacecraft and actually delivering data in an easy to use and accessible way will open up new innovative opportunities for a large and very diverse number of customers.”

Alistair Currie, Chief Executive of Capital for Colleagues, said:

“We are delighted that the Bright Ascension team is joining Craft Prospect to work on this prestigious ESA backed project. This validation of BAL’s technology and expertise reinforces our belief in BAL’s business and its strong potential.”

The Directors of the Company are responsible for the contents of this announcement.

**ENDS**

For further information, please visit www.capitalforcolleagues.com or contact:

Capital for Colleagues plc

Capital for Colleagues is an investment company focused on the UK EOB sector. The Company has a proven management team, with a wide network of contacts and affiliates, as well as established access to investment opportunities, enabling the Company to execute its strategy and capitalise on EOB-focused investment opportunities. In addition, the Company educates and assists companies that are looking to launch employee ownership schemes, advising them, amongst other things, on how to secure investment and achieve their objectives.

Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation EU 596/2014 as it forms part of retained EU law (as defined in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018).