Rand Capital Corporation

Conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. 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 will now turn the conference over to Craig Mahalik, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Rand Capital and for joining us today for our first quarter 2022 financial results conference call. On the line with me are Dan Pemberthy, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Margaret Brechtel, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. A copy of the release and slides that accompany our conversation are available on our website at rancapital.com. If you're following along on the slide deck, please turn to slide two, where I'd like to point out some important information. As you are likely aware, we may make some forward-looking statements during this presentation. These statements apply to future events that are subject to risks and uncertainties, as well as other factors that could cause actual results to differ from where we are today. You can find a summary of these risks and uncertainties and other factors in the earnings release, as well as other documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents can be found on our website or at sec.gov. During today's call, we'll also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures. We believe these will be useful in evaluating our performance. should not consider the presentation of this additional information in isolation or as a substitute for results in accordance with GAAP. We have provided reconciliations of non-GAAP measures with comparable GAAP measures in the tables that accompany today's release. With that, please turn to slide three, and I'll hand the discussion over to Dan. Dan?

Thank you, Craig, and good afternoon, everyone. We kicked off the year with a strong first quarter as we continue to execute on our strategy to position our portfolio to grow investment income and distribute our earnings to shareholders. We delivered 11% growth in total investment income by leveraging the significant investments made in 2021, which had approximately $20 million in portfolio additions, and are now reaping the benefits of our improved mix of interest-yielding debt instruments. We paid a regular quarterly cash dividend of 15 cents per share during the first quarter. This did represent a 50% increase over the regular quarterly dividends in 2021. And more recently, on April 28th, RAND declared its regular quarterly cash dividend distribution of 15 cents per share again, this being for the second quarter. Other notable highlights during the quarter included the election of a new independent board member at our April annual meeting. Carrie Jaroslawski enhances our board expertise with her significant finance and operations knowledge, as well as her broad SEC experience. RAND's board of directors also renewed the share repurchase program, which permits the purchase of up to 1.5 million in additional RAND common stock. This renewed program expires on April 21st of 2023. If you turn to slide four, you can see the mix of our portfolio between debt and equity and the changes during the first quarter. As of March 31st, 2022, our portfolio consisted of investments in 33 companies, which was down one since 2021's year end. The fair value of those investments totaled $62.4 million, which contracted 3%, primarily due to the changes in ACV auctions market value, as well as the impact of net new investments and payoffs. At quarter end, the portfolio comprised of approximately 48% in fixed-rate debt investments, 33% in equity investments in private companies, and 19% in dividend-paying publicly traded BDCs, as well as our ACV auctions securities. We have made good progress in shifting our investment portfolio composition toward more debt instruments, and we expect that trend to continue as we execute on our strategy. Also during the quarter, we made two follow-on investments that totaled $542,000, exited one position, and sold public securities. Those transactions are highlighted on slide five. The largest follow-on investment during the period was a $318,000 debt investment in dealer solutions and design, raising the balance of our term note to 3.1 million. This note does accrue at 14%, which includes a 12% current pay and a 2% PIC accrual. In addition, we continue to hold our $1.1 million equity investment in the company, which consists of both preferred and common shares. Established in 2005, DSD was the first company to create the concept-to-completion approach to fixed operations of new and renovated auto dealership facilities, basically the back of the house of an auto dealership. We also funded a $224,000 equity investment in ITA acquisitions, which consisted of Class A preferred units and Class B units. ITA manufactures a broad variety of window covering components and finished window treatments, including wood, faux wood and fabric shades, shutters and blinds for both residential and commercial applications. We exited our investment in social flow. a long-held equity investment, and also benefited from this exit value in excess of our fair value. In addition, during the quarter, we sold public equity investments, including some ACV securities and BDC stock holdings, to generate cash for both working capital as well as future debt instruments. We sold approximately 37,000 shares of ACV during the period at an average price of $13.82 per share for a net realized gain of approximately $500,000. As a reminder, any proceeds for us above our approximately $100,000 remaining cost will be a capital gain and treated as such as it relates to any potential regulated investment company, or RIC-based income and capital gain distribution calculations. At quarter end, we still hold 405,934 shares of ACB, which represented approximately 10% of our total portfolio's fair value. The charts on slide six illustrate the diversity in our portfolio and the change in industry mix during the first quarter. With the impact of recent investments and exits and fair value changes, professional services is now our largest industry classification at 24%, with software right behind at 23%. The ranking of the other industries did not significantly change. We value the diversity of our portfolio as we feel this mitigates market risks impact. Slide 7 lists our top five portfolio companies at quarter end, which collectively represent almost half of our total portfolio. The two major changes since last quarter were DSD and KTEC, which have swapped places given our recent investment in DSD, and also ACV's fair value declining. This now does represent 10% of the total portfolio, down from 13% last quarter. which has an impact following our stock sale and the resulting change in stock price as well. ACV still ranks high, though, at number two. With that, I'll turn it over to Margaret to review our financials in greater depth.