Horizon Technology Finance Corporation

Greetings. Welcome to the Horizon Technologies Finance fourth quarter 2025 conference call. At this time, all participants will be in listen-only mode. The 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. Please note this conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the conference over to Megan Bacon, Director of Investor Relations and Marketing. Megan, you may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to Horizon Technology Finance Corporation's fourth quarter 2025 conference call. Representing the company today are Mike Balkin, Chief Executive Officer, Paul Seitz, Chief Investment Officer, and Dan Trollio, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to point out that the Q4 earnings press release and Form 10-K are available on the company's website at horizontechfinance.com. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that during this conference call, the company will make certain forward-looking statements, including statements with regard to the future performance of the company. Words such as believes, expects, anticipates, intends, or similar expressions are used to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to the inherent uncertainties in predicting future results and conditions. Certain factors could cause actual results to differ on a material basis from those projected in these forward-looking statements. And some of these factors are detailed in the risk factor discussion in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Horizon CEO, Mike Balkin.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for your interest in Horizon. Today, we will update you on our quarterly performance in the current operating environment. Paul Seitz, our Chief Investment Officer, will take us through recent business and portfolio developments, as well as the current status of the venture lending market and Dan Trollier, our Chief Financial Officer, will detail our operating performance financial condition. We will then take questions. 2025 was a year of transformation for Horizon in many respects. While we navigated a number of micro and macro challenges throughout the year, we believe we began to successfully lay the groundwork for Horizon to succeed over the longer term. While the government shutdown in the fourth quarter led to our merger with MRCC being delayed into 2026, we are excited to be holding our special meeting shortly and hopefully closing the merger in the weeks ahead. As a reminder, closing the merger will significantly increase Horizon's equity capital available for investment in earning assets and allow it to take advantage of greater economies of scale in the combined vehicle. Additionally, Monroe Capital, which is the parent company of Horizon Technology Finance Management, will be continuing to provide ongoing support to the post-merger company. As a result, we expect you will see an even more coordinated and synergistic effort between Monroe and Horizon in 2026, which is already evidenced by Horizon's first quarter co-investment with Monroe in a venture loan to Osseo. With Horizon's larger capital base and Monroe's ability to co-invest, we expect to originate larger venture loans to cutting-edge early and later stage venture capital and institutional-backed companies, as well as small-cap public companies. The merger, working with Monroe, and increasing our ability to fund larger transactions will allow us to bring the Horizon platform to the next level. I cannot be more excited for Horizon's future. Turning to our specific results for the quarter, we generated net investment income of 18 cents per share, while our NAV per share ended the year at $6.98. Based on our outlook, our undistributed spillover income, and the anticipated completion of our merger with MRCC, our board declared regular monthly distributions of 6 cents per share payable in April, May, and June of 2026. As we grow our portfolio in future quarters, it remains our goal to deliver NII at or above our declared distributions over time. We achieved a portfolio yield on debt investments of over 14% for the fourth quarter and nearly 16% for the full year 2025, once again at or near the top of the BDC industry. We redeemed our notes due in 2026 with the proceeds of our issuance of 7% notes due 2028. We finished the year with a committed and approved backlog of 154 million and our portfolio returned to growth in the fourth quarter. And finally, we are closing attractive venture debt investments while our pipeline of venture debt opportunities continues to grow. As we begin 2026, We remain excited for our long-term future growth given our numerous strengths, including our portfolio yield remains among the industry's highest, which we expect will lead to increased NII over time. Our liquidity and balance sheet are strong and will further strengthen post-merger. We maintain a strong committed backlog, a robust pipeline, and with the backing of Monroe Capital, we are able to compete for larger, higher quality opportunities to make debt investments to growing companies, which will grow our loan portfolio. And finally, the demand for venture debt capital remains high, and we expect to be a key supplier of such capital in the coming year and beyond. Again, we appreciate your continued interest and support in the Horizon Technology Finance Platform. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Investment Officer, Paul Seitz, to give you the details of our fourth quarter results in progress. Paul?