Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Fidus Investment Corporation’s First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder this conference may be recorded. I would like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Mr. Jody Burfening. Please go ahead ma’am.

Thank you, Michelle and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us for Fidus Investment Corporation's First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. With me this morning are Ed Ross, Fidus Investment Corporation's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Shelby Sherard, Chief Financial Officer. Fidus Investment Corporation issued a press release yesterday afternoon with details of the company's quarterly financial results. A copy of the press release is available on the Investor Relations page of the company's website at fdus.com. I'd like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded. A replay of today's call will be available by using the telephone numbers and conference ID provided in the earnings press release. In addition, an archived webcast replay will be available on the Investor Relations page of the company's website at fdus.com following the conclusion of this conference call. I'd also like to call your attention to the customary Safe Harbor disclosure regarding forward-looking information included in the earnings release. The conference call today will contain certain forward-looking statements including statements regarding the goals, strategies, beliefs, future potential, operating results, and cash flows of Fidus Investment Corporation. Although management believes these statements are reasonable based on estimates, assumptions and projections as of today, May 08, 2015 these statements are not guarantees of future performance. Time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any telephonic or webcast replay. Actual results may differ materially as a result of risks, uncertainties, and other factors including but not limited to the factors set forth in the company's filings with the SEC. Fidus undertakes no obligation to update or revise any of these forward-looking statements. With that I would now like to turn the call over to Ed Ross. Ed?

Good morning Ed. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter 2015 earnings call. I will start our call by highlighting our results for the first quarter followed by a discussion of our investment activity and the performance of our investment portfolio. Then Shelby will go into more detail about our financial results and liquidity position. After that we will open up the call for questions. Fidus performed well during the first quarter against our stated long term objectives of delivering stable and growing dividends with an emphasis on capital preservations. We delivered a solid first quarter across key measures covering our regular dividend with net investment income and ending the quarter with a solid level of liquidity this portfolio expansion. In addition, we maintained high credit quality metrics in our portfolio with none of our debt investments on non-accrual status. As of March 31, 2015 net asset value was $244.7 million or $15.18 per share. Fidus generated net investment income of $6.2 million or $0.39 per share for the first quarter, while adjusted net investment income which we defined as net investment income excluding any capital gains incentive fee attributable to realized and unrealized gains and losses was $6.3 million or $0.39 per share. On March 26, 2015 we paid a regular quarterly dividend of $0.38 per share to stockholders of record on March 12, 2015. For the second quarter of 2015, the board of directors has declared a regular quarterly dividend o $0.38 per share and a special dividend of $0.02 per share both of which are payable on June 25, 2015 to stock holders of record on June 11, 2015. As a reminder, we have an outstanding balance of spillover income or taxable income in excess of distributions of $13.8 million at March 31. Since the beginning…

Thank you, Ed, and good morning everyone. I’ll review our first quarter results in more detail and close with comments on our liquidity position. Similar to last quarter I will be providing comparative commentary versus the prior quarter Q4 2014. Total investment income was $12.8 million for the three months ended March 31, 2015, a decrease of approximately $0.8 million from the $13.7 million of total investment income for the fourth quarter of 2014, due to $1 million decrease and fee income and a $0.4 million decrease in dividend income from FCA, LLC and income producing equity investment that was redeemed in Q4, offset by a $0.6 million of incremental and interest income related to increased average assets under management. Total expenses were $6.6 million for the first quarter, in line with Q4. Interest expense increased by $0.1 million and base management fees increased by $0.1 million which were offset by a $0.2 million decrease in incentive fee. Interest expense includes the interest paid on Fidus' SBA debentures and the line of credit as well as any commitment and unrealized [ph] fee. As of March 31, 2015, the weighted average interest rate on our outstanding debt was 4.2% versus 4% as of December 31, 2014 due to higher fixed interest rates on SBA debentures that pulled in late March versus the initial interim rates. Net investment income, or NII, for the three months ended March 31, 2015 was $6.2 million or $0.39 per share versus $0.42 per share in Q4 2014. Adjusted NII was $0.39 per share in Q1 versus $0.43 per share in Q4. The quarter-over-quarter decrease was driven by a decrease in transaction fees related to investment activity in Q1 versus Q4. Adjusted NII is defined as net investment income, excluding any capital gains incentive fee expense, or…

Thanks, Shelby. As always I’d like to thank our team and the Board of Directors at Fidus for their dedication and hard work, and our shareholders for their continued support. I will now turn the call back over to Michelle for Q&A. Michelle?

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. On the kind of the market environment you talking about, obviously there’s a couple of push and pulls as I see. Can you give us a little bit more color on if the private equity activity level is remaining or expectative build or even remain strong. What do you think and I realize this is hard to project, right. What do you think of probable or potential repayments in the remainder of the year, obviously you had a fair amount of fall given obviously your primarily involved with those same sponsors and some of those deals might changing hands and you might be getting taken out. So can you give us an idea of just qualitatively about what your feelings are there?

Absolutely, it’s a great question Robert. I think we’re hoping that this will be a good year from an investment perspective and a very solid vintage and the outlook for that is we see here today is good. But having said that, what comes with that and I think you know this pretty well is that we probably – we have some companies that are right for realization in our portfolio. Last year we had about $62 million of repayments and I think we would expect for a increase in that number this year. I guess, year to-date we’ve had $40 million. I don’t think we expect a crazy numbers but I would expect an increase over and above last year. Its hard to predict as you well know but that’s what we would expect at this point, probably more towards the end of the year though.

Got it. Great. Thanks. And then also on kind of the other dynamic in that obviously I mean a lot of money potentially chasing deal et cetera, on pricing both, but you’ve seen some yield compression, what do you think the potential is for to expand a little bit on refinancing, obviously if while a company finances that you don’t get the equity gain. If you’ve got an equity position and a portfolio company on other hand and they do get sold your realized versus unrealized dynamic shift a little bit. So, you’re expecting there’s going to more of the account [ph] like sale kind of activity as you saw with connector in the second quarter or something more on the refinancing side given what we’re seeing some of that as well.

Sure, sure. I think it’s a great question as well and I wish I could predict it, but I would tell you I think there is –its primarily going to be driven M&A activity, but we do have several or more than a couple of companies in our portfolio that could be refinanced. The strategy of those individual portfolio companies were to lower their cost of financings, not make acquisitions what have you. So, I think there’s will balance, but I think a majority of the repayments will come from M&A activity this year. It could be wrong. It’s really hard to predict, but that’s what I would expect at this point.

Got it. Thank you. One final one if I can hand you on kind of this allied issue. Your take conservative, I want to say over conservative, but appropriately conservative approach in the market. I think you don’t chase structures and the term we’ve heard is, again, obviously these key firms are willing to pay greater and greater multiples to some of these companies and obviously they prefer to level that up a pretty good deal maybe to the point that you’re not willing to do the deal, this kind of touches on some of your comments on in the prepared remarks, but what’s the risk that the market as we gets potentially more aggressive, since it gets away from you in terms of what you’re willing on the risk appetite front?

Obviously, a great question, Robert. I think from my perspective a couple of things, one is, we’re very much look at opportunities and look at the market on a risk adjusted return basis, and we are not volume players as I think you just iterated. I think as we move forward our primary focus is focusing on the quality of the underlying companies and the quality of those assets that we’re putting on our books. And so – if a company is a truly very high quality company, heavy trading, whether it’s seven or 10 times EBITDA and that had sustainable cash flows we are willing to increase leverage over and above where our current portfolio is leverage, because we’re looking at that on a risk adjusted return basis. Let’s we went all the way to five times, which we will do on occasion, but typically when a company is, the equity values at eight, nine, 10 times. And we see sustainability in those cash flows and very strong credit metrics. So it really comes down to what’s the quality of the underlying company. So when I think above do we get just the market move away from our strategy, I don’t think so. I do think we have the ability to move up and down in terms of size of company, as well as finding pockets to where we have real expertise and are willing to take risk adjusted returns whether it’s at lower leverage points or high leverage points. So, it doesn’t concern me too much at this point.

Got it. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Bryce Rowe with Robert W. Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, Ed and Shelby.

Good morning, Bryce.

Robert covered us the topic, right. I wanted to ask about – did want to ask about capital raising process in terms of all to get the ATM in place and you start to use it. So, maybe you could just talk about your strategy or your preference from a capital raising perspective as we move forward. I know you still have availability on the – from an SBA debenture perspective, this availability within the credit facility? Thanks.

That’s a great question. You want to talk about what we’ve done to-date. What we’ve been doing and then I’ll join in gaps.

Yes. From a current liquidity position as Ed mentioned we has some subsequent events that brought in some more cash, and so, as we stand today we don’t have anything outstanding on our line of credit. So as you refer to we do have the SBA debentures, which is kind of been the primary source of capital that we’ve used for investment to the extent. The investments are SBIC eligible. As back stop, we’ve got the line of credit that we have truly used as a revolver. And from an ATM perspective we have kind of year to-date in 2015, done a gross proceeds of about $1.8 million and since we loss the program, we’ve done net proceeds of $4.6. So kind of some modest equity raises there that’s kind of helped us to manage our outstanding debt. So, given where we stand now was close to $120 million of liquidity. We’re fairly well positioned for kind of near term investment activity.

Yes. And I don’t think I would add there is just I do feel like that the ATM program is something that we see as attractive. We haven’t said that that activity level for us has been really very pretty modest and I don’t think we expect any major change in that as we move forward.

Okay. That’s helpful. Again, my questions have already asked and answered. Thank you guys, appreciated

Thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Chris Kotowski with Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes. Those guys covered most of what I had to, but that’s it. I may have misheard you, but did you say that your portfolio – I thought I heard you say that the portfolio today was flat with December 31, 2014. Did you mean March 31?

No. We meant December. How you’re doing Chris? Hope you well?

I’m good.

So, we’ve had $40 million, so approximately $40 of new investment activity here in 2015. But with the connect realization which was both a debt and an equity realization we’ve had $40 or approximately $40 million of realizations.

Okay.

All flat with yearend as we sit here today. That’s exactly right.

Okay. And then, I’m wondering just with the turmoil and currency markets and it has to put pressure on any kind of manufacturing based export oriented companies, I’m wondering are you seeing stress on cash flows of any companies like that in your portfolio?

It’s good question. I got to think here for a second. It’s a very good question. I will tell you, I don’t think so. Most of our businesses that we invest in are obvious U.S. Domicile and as I think through the portfolio here I don’t think we are experiencing anything. It really negative momentum if you will or negative trends, due to currency markets in our portfolio. I really can’t think of one right now. It could be wrong but I just can’t take it one.

Okay.

Its pretty good stability and I will tell you the overall portfolio as it has actually for a while is continuing to be what I would call a slow growth mode and we feel very good about the overall quality of the portfolio and the underlying portfolio companies for that matter.

Okay. That’s it from me. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Vernon Plack with BB&T Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much. And just one follow-up, are you considering any alternative investment strategies, in other words something that will fall into that 30% non-qualified bucket?

It’s a very good question. And I will tell you or we thinking about things and looking into what I would say small degree, I’d say, yes. But what we’re doing right now, rightly or wrongly, quite frankly is sticking to the strategy and what we’re kind of build to do which is to originate what I would call very high quality debt and equity investments in lower middle market companies. So, we do look at larger companies from time-to-time for sure and I know they are a lot of strategic initiatives going on in the BDC spectrum if you will. But right now, I wouldn’t expect any measure change from us any time soon. I think we feel very good about the strategy we’re executing on, and I do think we’re going to maintain what I would call a very deliberate investment pace and really it’s going to be lumpy to this. We’re continuing to really look for what we considered to be the best companies that we can invest in and kind of focusing on quality rather than quantity.

Okay. So, we should -- and one something changes, should just be a business as usual for you?

I think that’s right. I think that’s exactly right.

I’ll take that as very good news. Thanks.

Okay.

Thank you. And I’m showing no further questions at this time. And I will like to turn the call back to Mr. Ed Ross for any further remarks.

Thank you, Michelle. And thank you everyone for joining us this morning. We look forward to speaking with you on our first quarter call. I guess that will be in early August. Have a great day and a great weekend. Thank you again.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program and you may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.