Trinity Capital Inc.

Good afternoon. My name is Leo, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to Trinity Capital's fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. Our hosts for today's call are Steve Brown, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Kyle Brown, President and Chief Investment Officer, David Lund, Chief Financial Officer, and Sarah Stanton, General Counsel. Jerry Harder, Chief Credit Officer, Michael Testa, Chief Accounting Officer, and Ron Kundage, Senior Managing Director, are also present. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. A replay of the webcast is available on Trinity Capital's Investor Relations website. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Sarah Stanton. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Leo, and welcome everyone to Trinity Capital's earnings conference call for the fourth quarter and full year of 2021. Trinity's fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results were released today after market closed and can be accessed from Trinity's investor relations website at ir.trinitycap.com. A replay of the call is available at Trinity's webpage or by using the telephone number provided in today's earnings release. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements that are not based on historical fact made during this call, including any statements relating to financial guidance, may be deemed forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. Because these forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, There are important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. We encourage you to refer to our most recent SEC filings for information on some of these risk factors. Trinity Capital assumes no obligation or responsibility to update any forward-looking statements. Please note that the information reported on this call speaks only as of today, March 3, 2022. Therefore, you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay listening or transcript reading. With that, allow me to introduce Trinity Capital's Chairman and CEO, Steve Brown.

Thank you, Sarah, and thank you to everyone joining us today. I want to take just a moment at the top of this call and mention that we have been watching as the tragic events in Eastern Europe have unfolded, and our thoughts are with those people who have been affected by these events. While we continue to monitor the events, we're not aware of any of our portfolio companies that are currently affected by this situation. Now turning to Trinity's exciting performance this past year. 2021 was a transformational year for Trinity Capital. Since our IPO early in the year, we have driven exceptional portfolio growth and generated record new commitments. In the fourth quarter, we built upon our already strong performance as we continued to execute successfully against our business strategy, doing what we said we would do and delivering on key financial and operating metrics. Trinity continues to benefit from a favorable VC operating environment as we are seeing a large volume of strong credit opportunities. The deal flow in the growth market has been very active, which has fueled originations and record net portfolio growth for Trinity since entering the public markets. The venture capital ecosystem was exceptional this past year with record funding and strong fundraising activity. Our business model and strategy at Trinity ensures that we are built for any economic cycle. The steps we have taken in 2021 to optimize our capital structure while continuing our rigorous and conservative underwriting process will ensure that we have the right portfolio companies in our book to weather any potential down cycles. We continue to build an industry-leading, unique venture lending and equipment finance platform that sets us apart and meets the evolving needs of our portfolio companies and prospective partners. Our extensive network in both the VC and equipment finance industry combined with our technology and operational expertise solidifies our leading market position. While the team will go into greater detail on the quarter and year-end results, I wanted to share just a few of the key performance highlights. Our growing portfolio contributed to the strong operating performance in Q4, allowing us to declare a dividend of 36 cents per share, an increase of 9.1% above the prior quarter, and in line with our goal of increasing our dividend as we grow our platform. We have now increased our dividend for four straight quarters. We delivered a record year in both commitments and deployments, nearly doubling our 2020 deployments with just under $560 million funded for the year. We also grew the portfolio net of payoffs each quarter with our highest net portfolio gain coming in Q4 at over $150 million. Q4 net investment income was $10.6 million or $0.39 per share, exceeding our declared dividend by $0.03 per share. Our credit quality in the portfolio remained strong with 98.3% of our debt investments at cost performing. A major goal for 2021 was to strengthen our balance sheet and increase our funding capabilities to manage the growth that we are currently experiencing while also positioning the company for continued growth in 2022. To that end, we made several moves in Q4, including issuing $75 million of 4.25% notes due in December 2026, adding our key bank credit facility, and initiating an ATM program. Collectively, these moves will drive our costs of capital down while increasing our capacity to fuel our growth. Additionally, we announced the appointment of two new members to our Board of Directors effective December 7th. Both bring highly relevant experience and will be an immediate value in guiding Trinity as we execute on our strategic plan. With regards to the RIA progress, As we have stated previously, in Q3 2021, we filed an application with the SEC for exemptive release to form a registered investment advisor. If approved, we believe the RIA will provide financial flexibility for synergistic investment opportunities and create additive earnings to our public internally managed BDC. We do not have a set timeline and will continue working with the SEC on our application. Trinity is off to a historic start in 2022. Last month, we announced the sale of our equity investments in Lucid Group and Matterport, where we booked over 50 million in realized gains. To put this number in perspective, our record financial results for 2021 produced 52 million in combined net investment income and net realized gains. These sales bolster our ability to scale our venture lending capacity and are in alignment with our long-term capital structure strategy. These transactions have set the stage for a strong 2022 financial leap for Trinity, and we are equally excited to be able to share this historic gain with our shareholders. As we said in February, our board is evaluating our dividend distribution plan for 2022, and we plan to offer an update on that front later this month. Before I hand the call over to Kyle, I would like to reiterate what a great year it has been for our business, our team, and our portfolio companies. Trinity's unique business model and asset class have established Trinity as a leader in our market. The momentum we have generated will fuel our continued growth as a public company. And finally, most importantly, we pride ourselves on being a people and culture focused organization. As a result, it is clear that Trinity is now a destination for top talent in the space, and we will continue to add the best people in the industry as we scale the platform. We are excited to execute on our strategic objectives for this year, and we will maintain a deliberate and disciplined approach to offering capital solutions to growth stage companies across our industry. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Kyle Brown, our President and Chief Investment Officer, for some further thoughts on our progress and more detail on the market. Kyle?