Acacia Research Corporation

Greetings. Welcome to the FATF Research Second Quarter Financial Resource Conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Rob Fink of FNK IR. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Hosting all today are Clifford Press Chief Executive Officer, also the Chief Investment Officer, and Richard Rosenstein, Chief Financial Officer. Before beginning, I would like to remind you that the information provided during this call may contain forward-looking statements related to current project expectations, estimates, forecasts, and projections about future events that are forward-looking as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally relate to the company's plans, objectives, and expectations for future operations, and are based on the current estimates and projections, future results or trends. Actual results may differ materially from those rejected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. For discussion of such risks and uncertainties, please see the risk factors described in Acacia's annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q that are filed with the SEC. I would like to remind everyone that a press release disclosing the company's financial results was issued this morning before the market opened. This press release may be accessed on the company's website at akisharesearch.com under the news and abouts tab. With all that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Clifford Press. Clifford, the call is yours.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. On June 5th, our strategic alliance with Starboard Value got off to a flying start with the announcement of our first approved transaction, the acquisition of a portfolio of investments in 18 public and private life sciences companies from the former Woodford Equity Income Fund for a total consideration of £224 million or $282 million. This was an opportunistic acquisition, which we discovered during the due diligence process for another investment idea involving a company with several very large holders, one of which was the former Woodford Fund, then in liquidation. When the pandemic hit, the potential secondary sales of the Woodford Fund stalled and we were in a position to consummate a transaction under extremely challenging circumstances. I'm sure we all remember how the markets were acting in the first week of April. We were fortunate to be able to conduct due diligence on 18 different investments, most of which were in the UK during the lockdown and complete the transaction by early June. Before I turn the call over to Al to Let me review our IP business. During the second quarter we acquired Excalibur IP, a portfolio of more than 2,500 patents spun out of Yahoo and a portfolio of nearly 150 Wi-Fi and IoT patents from L3 Harris. As we have noted before, there continues to be a limited capital supply available in the IP market and we believe that we are able to obtain realistic pricing. Importantly, we have begun to see soft licensing revenue from these acquisitions. Mark Booth and his team continue to evaluate additional acquisitions. With that, let me turn the call over to Al Tabeer, our Chief Investment Officer. Al?