TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp.

Good day and welcome to the Triple Point Venture Growth second quarter 2019 earnings conference call and webcast. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need any assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Christopher Gastelou, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ashley, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We are pleased to share with you our results for the second quarter of 2019. Here with me are Jim LeBay, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, and Sajal Srivastava, President and Chief Investment Officer. Before I turn the call over to Jim, I would like to direct your attention to the customary Safe Harbor disclosure in our press release regarding forward-looking statements and remind you that during this call, we will make certain statements that relate to future events or the company's future performance or financial condition, which may be considered forward-looking statements under federal securities law. We ask that you refer to our most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for important factors that could cause actual results differ materially from these statements. We do not undertake any obligation to update our forward-looking statements or projections unless required by law. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements made during the call, which reflect management's opinions only as of today. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings, please visit the company's website at tpvg.com. Now, I'll turn the call over to Jim.

Thanks, Chris, and good afternoon, everybody. The second quarter represented not only another good quarter, the term that we've been using to describe the past several quarters, but the quarter was truly a great quarter. Our business continued with its ongoing strong performance and returns. In this quarter, we're pleased that our results also reflect and demonstrate the power and value of the warrant kicker. The component that we receive as part of the loans we make in our venture lending business, as well as the direct equity investments that we make in some of our portfolio companies. Once again, we generated a quarter of strong earnings and more than covered our dividend. We're making great progress on all fronts, with our earnings, growth in net assets, originations, funding activities, ROE, Sajal Srivastava, James Labe All the signs bode well for the remainder of 2019, and we remain excited on the outlook for continued growth in the portfolio. Here's a few of the highlights. Our earnings per share more than doubled over the quarter of a year ago. We earned well in excess of our dividend from an NII perspective. We continue to post attractive portfolio yields with a 16.5% weighted average portfolio yield on our debt investments, including prepayments. This was the exact same weighted average portfolio yield that we had last quarter as well. We had a notable unrealized gain this quarter from an IPO at one of our portfolio companies, and we actually had another IPO within our portfolio occur as well just after the close of last quarter. Our Net Investment Income, or NII, for the first half of this year also increased 36% over the same period of a year ago. We also saw our NAV increase this quarter by 60 cents. Another outstanding achievement was a 28.5% ROE for the quarter, based on the total net income and help by our unrealized gains, certainly an ROE figure all by itself in a class for BDCs. Our ROE for the quarter based on net investment income was 12%, a number that we've been running good 10% or more above for the last several quarters as well. To wrap up, I'd like to point out that all of these quarterly accomplishments were achieved with only modest leverage. And now with increased credit facilities, The signed term sheets we already have in-house and a strong pipeline. This capacity and the ability to employ additional leverage gives us the potential to enhance our returns even further. The recent IPOs at CrowdStrike and Medallia greatly contribute to our unrealized gains. During the second quarter, CrowdStrike completed its IPO on June 12th. It opened trading at $63.50, After pricing its IPO at $34 a share, which was above the high end of its expected range, the company raised more than $600 million. While we were under a six-month lockup period, as of the end of the quarter, the unrealized gain on our investment was $18 million. The stock continues to perform well, and as of yesterday's close at $94 a share, it represents an unrealized gain of $25 million in total. In addition, after the close of the quarter, as I mentioned, another portfolio company, Medallia, they priced an IPO at $21 a share and raised over $325 million. As of yesterday's close, Medallia's stock price was nearly double its IPO price. Aside from these IPOs, we continue to also have positive developments in many other portfolio companies, with several raising new rounds of capital or getting acquired. Sajal will provide more specifics on these events. For delivering this performance, dividend coverage, and returns to our shareholders, we didn't have to stretch. We didn't need to use excessive leverage. We didn't change market strategies or our investment discipline. We continue to keep and stick to our long-standing venture lending business fundamentals at venture growth stage companies. These haven't changed since the day of our IPO five years ago, a little over five years ago. As we look ahead, momentum in our market remains strong and the demand for venture lending at venture growth stage companies continues to be brisk, as evidenced by our large and growing pipeline. There's no lack of deal flow. We plan to capitalize on this pipeline and build upon the achievements of these first two quarters of 2019 for the remainder of this year and the years well beyond. Our performance speaks for itself. This is about results, not words. In closing, I'd also like to acknowledge that this month marked the 20th anniversary of Sajal and I working together, which is unprecedented in the venture lending industry. and is across two industry-leading platforms. TriplePoint Capital as well as TPVG have benefited from the continuity of our partnership and leadership together over that 20-year period. And we look forward to at least another 20 or more years of leading the industry and the TriplePoint platform. I'll now turn the call over to Sajal.