Emergence, Third Rock, OrbiMed head up late-decade venture portfolio at CalPERS

Funds from Emergence Capital Partners, Third Rock Ventures and OrbiMed Advisors head up a portfolio of late-decade venture funds at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

The portfolio of 2007 to 2011 vintages favors mid-sized fund and an early stage approach to investing. Almost half of the funds are between $250 million and $750 million in size, and nearly half do early stage investing.

Another 40 percent of the funds are smaller, coming in under $200 million, and the portfolio has allocated a third of its funds to late-stage dealmaking.

Overall, the portfolio’s performance is good. More than half of the funds had IRRs in the double digits as of March, with two posting IRRs above 40 percent, according to a recent portfolio report. On the other end of the spectrum, four of the funds had negative IRRs.

The top-performing fund was Emergence Capital Partners II from 2007 with an IRR of 45.8 percent as of March, the report shows. The fund by then had returned more than 4x capital invested.

A close second was Third Rock Ventures II from 2010 with an IRR of 40.7 percent.

Next in line was OrbiMed Private Investments IV also from 2010 with an IRR of 33.7 percent, according to the report, followed by a second Third Rock fund – the 2007 Third Rock Ventures – with an IRR of 31.7 percent.

Also with solid results was the Column Group’s fund from 2007 and New Enterprise Associates 13.

The entire portfolio is available in the attached spreadsheet with commitments, distributions and IRRs.