Great Elm Capital Corp.

And welcome to the Great Elm Capital Corp First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief 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. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce our host, Garrett Edison, ICR. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for Great Elm Capital Corp's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. If you'd like to be added to our distribution list, you can email investorrelations at greatelmcap.com, or you can sign up for alerts directly on our website, www.greatelmcc.com. I'd like to note the slide presentation posted on our website accompanying today's call. slide presentation can be found on our website under Financial Information, Quarterly Results. On our website, you can also find our earnings release and SEC filings. I would like to call your attention to the customary safe harbor statement regarding forward-looking information. Also, please note that nothing in today's call constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of offers to purchase our securities. Today's conference call includes forward-looking statements, and we ask that you refer to Great Elm Capital Corp's filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Great Elm Capital Corp does not undertake to update its forward-looking statements unless required by law. To obtain copies of SEC filings, please visit Great Elm Capital Corp's website under Financial Information, SEC Filings, or visit the SEC's website. Posting the call this morning is Matt Kaplan, Great Elm Capital Corp's Chief Executive Officer, who will be joined by Kerry Davis, GECC CFO, Adam Kleinman, Chief Compliance Officer of GECC, and Mike Keller, President of Great Elm Specialty Finance. I will now turn the call over to GECC's CEO, Matt Kaplan.

Thank you, Garrett. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. 2022 was a reboot year for Great Elm. Now, 2023 is shaping up to be the year that Great Elm goes back on offense, led by a revamped portfolio strategy. Our focus on cash generation and portfolio construction namely deploying capital into senior secured floating rate investments able to generate first quarter NII of $2.8 million or 37 cents per share, a 23% gain from the 30 cents reported for the fourth quarter of 2022. On our prior call, I had mentioned that we were positioned to cover our new quarterly distribution of 35 cents per share over the course of 2023. and we not only covered our distribution, we exceeded it in the first quarter. Given our momentum and our growing portfolio, we believe we remain well positioned to grow NII again in the second quarter and cover our quarterly distribution. In addition, our net asset value increased by 6% in the quarter to $11.88 per share from both realized and unrealized mark-to-market gains on certain investments in the quarter. recovering over half of the portfolio declines seen in the prior quarter. We are focused on further recovering net asset value in the months ahead. As we noted on our prior call, we are strategically focused on constructing a high-quality diversified portfolio focused on performing and cash yielding investments. For the second consecutive quarter, the cash income generated from our investment portfolio was the highest amount in GECC's history. representing over 85% of total investment income. In the first quarter, we opportunistically deployed approximately $46 million into new investments at average yields in excess of 12%. Meanwhile, about 53 million of assets were monetized in the quarter at average yields just above 10%. Most importantly, 58% of our debt investment portfolio at quarter end consisted of floating rate debt. up from 50% at the end of 2022 and almost double the 33% from just nine months ago. Average yield on our credit portfolio also increased to over 13% at quarter end from around 12% at the end of 2022. You should expect that we will continue to focus on investments that benefit from rising rates as opposed to fixed rate investments, but we also continue to monitor the Fed's policy stance. Along with reconstructing our portfolio to focus on floating rate investments, we have previously noted that we are committed to scaling our specialty finance platform. Today, I'm happy to announce that our healthcare finance vehicle recently closed a credit line with Encina Lender Finance. As a result, Great Elm Healthcare Finance now has access to up to $100 million of financing for healthcare-related secured lending. and we expect the team to begin deploying that capital in the second quarter in a disciplined manner toward its robust pipeline of investments. Our factoring business also continues to perform well, and as a result, we believe the specialty finance platform is well positioned to provide material contributions to GECC as we move through the year. Moving forward, We are cognizant of the increasingly challenging macro environment and remain measured with respect to deploying capital toward opportunities that have limited risk of permanent capital impairment and durable returns. We are excited for the future and our ability to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for our shareholders. I am proud of our team's ongoing efforts as we continue to grow Great Elm Capital Corp. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Kerry Davis to discuss our first quarter 2023 performance.