Longitude, Column Group, Altos top late-decade venture portfolio at CalPERS

Funds from Longitude Capital, Column Group and Altos Ventures top a portfolio of late-decade venture-capital funds at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

The portfolio favors mid-sized and smaller funds, and brings a diversified approach to investing. Almost half of the funds are between $250 million and $450 million in size, and another third are between $100 million and $250 million.

Nearly a half follow a multi-stage or generalist investment strategy, and just over a quarter do late-stage investing. There is one fund of funds from Vedanta Capital.

Overall, performance is unimpressive, given its generally favorable 2007 and 2008 vintages. Six of the 11 funds are in the black, but five remain in the red. Only four had positive IRRs in the double digits as of March 2017, and, of those, only two were above 20 percent, according to a public portfolio report.

The top performer as of March 2017 was Longitude Venture Partners from 2008 with an IRR of 25.3 percent, the report shows. Distributions from the $325 million fund were just slightly more than 2x invested capital.

Following it was the Column Group from 2007 with an IRR of 22.3 percent. In third place was Altos Ventures IV with an IRR of 18.6 percent, the report shows.

The portfolio also has funds from Commerce Street Capital, Paladin Capital Group and Quaker Partners.

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