Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Hercules Capital Q2 2017 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 maybe being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host for today’s conference, Mr. Michael Hara. You may begin.

Thank you, [Antonia]. Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to Hercules conference call for the second quarter 2017. With us on the call today from Hercules are Manuel Henriquez, Founder, Chairman and CEO and Mark Harris, Chief Financial Officer. Hercules second quarter 2017 financial results were released just after today’s market close, and can be accessed from Hercules Investor Relations section at htgc.com. We have arranged for a replay of the call at Hercules webpage or by using the telephone number and passcode provided in today’s earnings release. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual financial results filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission may differ from those contained herein due to timing delays between the date of this release and in the confirmation and final audit results. In addition, the statements that contained in this release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in those forward-looking statements, including and without limitation the risks and uncertainties, including the uncertainties surrounding the current market turbulence and/or other factors we identified from time-to-time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although we believe that the assumptions on which these forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, any of those assumptions can prove to be inaccurate and as a result, the forward-looking statements based on those assumptions also can be incorrect. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are made as of the date hereof and Hercules assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements or subsequent events. To obtain copies of related SEC filings, please visit sec.gov or our website htgc.com. With that, I will turn the call over to Manuel Henriquez, Hercules Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Michael, and good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us today for the Hercules Capital second quarter 2017 earnings call. During today’s call, I will be providing a brief overview of our strong financial results and select the key highlights and accomplishments during the quarter, followed by a summary of the venture capital place and activities and conclude with a brief outlook for Q3 and the second half of 2017. I will then turn the call over to Mark Harris, our CFO for a more detailed overview of our financial results and accomplishments for Q2 2017 and conclude with a question-and-answer session. With that, let me get started. We deliver another robust quarter with net investment income or NII of $0.31 per share and DNOI of approximately $0.33 per share. This outstanding achievement was very possible by the hard work and dedication of origination and business development teams who delivered an impressive performance of new commitments of nearly $400 million for the first half of 2017 ending in June 30, 2017. In addition, we're also beginning to realize the benefits from the Federal Reserve recent three rate increases, translating into a creative earnings and expected continued earnings growth in our investor portfolio. As you can change retain a highly asset sensitive balance sheet we are well-positioned for any future rate increases. We anticipate at least one additional rate increase in 2017 and a reminder each 25 basis points increase of prime rate equates to approximately $0.03 in annual NII earnings per share where the shares are currently outstanding today. I am also delighted to report that we are realizing material improvement in both our non-accrual and overall credit performance of our loan portfolio. Which both key indicators returning to historical low levels, we are expecting further improvements…

Thank you, Manuel, and good afternoon or evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m please to report our second quarter results with our true industry leading venture lending platform that continue to deliver strong financial performance even with the strong headwinds from payouts and amortization in the quarter. Today I will compliment Manuel’s remarks. They focus on key performance metrics that drove the second quarter earnings. But before I do this, I want to comment on our outstanding continued long-term performance metrics that we've achieved from inception through the second quarter of 2017, such as our remarkable low net losses of $4.8 million on cumulative basis since inception or over the 13 years history, and effective zero annualized losses since inception basis points. Our continued strong performance in terms of return on average equity of 13.2% and return on average assets of 6.8% in the second quarter is the highest amongst all BDC, our resilient origination platform that delivered almost $190 million of fundings in the pace of $201 million of headwinds, all happening in the one quarter. Our ability to work with in monetize positions when there are refinancing and other actions and finally the resilience of our dividend policy, which is driven $13.40 of dividend income, [indiscernible] our public offering and 16 consecutive $0.31 dividends quarters declared including the second quarter of 2017. With that, let’s turn my attention to second quarter key performance metrics. I’d like to first start off the resilience of our origination platform. We had strong investment fundings of $187.3 million in the second quarter or 22.2% from the first quarter 2017, of $133.3 million. This includes the addition of seven new portfolio companies that accounted for nearly 66% of our originations in the second quarter. Prior to the conversion of one position of debt to…

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from John Hecht of Jefferies. Your line is open.

Hey guys. Thanks very much. You give some guidance for the range of yields in the portfolio. Is that contemplating a rate hike in that margin or would rate hiking increase that yield range?

We never publish prospective yields related to any rate hikes because we don't know if they are going to happen, so the answer is no. It does not reflect any rate hikes that may happen. As to the formal part of your question, as we indicated in our release today, we expect yields to modulate slightly downward. We are seeing yield compressions ourselves. And I think the new guidance for yields that we are putting out there on the senior secured sole lender to our companies is going to be more in the neighborhood of 11.5% to 12.5% range, and it’s probably down in the last 12 months by 100 basis points or so, so now we're forecasting that. The more normalized yields are going to be 11.5% to 12.5% of the overall weighted portfolio on the core basis.

Okay. Thanks for that color. This quarter you gave some good details and breakouts of the fee kind of components of several recurring in one-time fees. Just couple questions, I know one-time fees are one-time fees, I think you tend to – you have those every quarter, what’s like an average pace of that, what you would consider non-recurring fees in any quarter? And then is the recurring fee kind of component amount you reported this quarter, is that a typical rate?

So I’ll let Mark expand on that. We've been grappling with this problem now and what is a normalized one-time fee and that kind of occurs consistently. And I would tell you that after 13 years here that number is probably $3 million to $4 million [indiscernible] events, but I’ll let Mark kind of expand on the fee color for you.

Yes. It’s a difficult question to answer because obviously it’s a function of what’s paying off and how old it was on our profile. The comment that I would make is, we did the breakout because obviously it was required under the SEC rules, but I think to really kind of answer your question on point, taking a little bit differently which is more of a percentage of the early pay downs that we see and that can typically range between 3% and 5%, but it's difficult because you need to understand what the aging is and what's paying off.

And I would just expand on that that it is highly likely that the breakout you see now most likely wouldn’t be repeated because it's a anomaly under the reporting requirements, under GAAP that if you have to pick interest that composes approximately 5% of your income and you have to break it out – in our history this is the only quarter that happened and we're not expecting that to occur in Q3 and beyond again. It was driven by early payout activities this quarter.

Okay. That’s helpful. And then you have a pretty big pipeline and given us what you think will converge in the next couple quarters or convert excuse me. Any interesting characteristics or trends you are seeing in the pipe, but in terms of maybe industry developments or geographic components that we should be talking about?

I think that I would describe, the industry right now is growing healthy demand for capital. I think everybody is looking to position their balance sheets rolling into the second half of 2017, especially if the IPO market seems of the non-existent and everybody want to have capital just in case something happens within the administration of the broader economy. So I think that if you really want my opinion, I think that you're seeing a lot of companies pursuing an insurance type of liquidity enhancement to their balance sheets and we're expecting a fairly healthy growth of activities. We do believe and are seeing early signs that the competition is beginning to add also quite a bit, a lot of our players that we certainly see are either out of money and have liquidity constraints or origination limitations or other factors that are not allowing them to be back in the marketplace. So even though we're forecasting yield compression. We're hoping to see that yield compression begins to bounce off the bottom meaning 11.5% and rise hopefully in the first quarter of 2018. But we're seeing a broader range of companies looking for capital right now. No one industry is being highlighted and no one industry is being discriminated upon because it seems to be across the board right now.

Great, thanks very much guys.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from Ryan Lynch of KBW. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one has to do with kind of the market environment. I mean there is obviously a robust second quarter as far as capital deployed in the D.C. market. I was just wondering what exactly is driving or has been driving the strong prepayment that you guys received in your portfolio in the second quarter and you guys also expect fairly healthy prepayment in the third and fourth quarter and then you said you expected to maybe add a little bit, so what's driving the strong prepayment that we've seen historically? And then why do you guys expect those to start to kind of slow down a little bit later this year?

So I it's funny that we use the word now more conservative $100 million when in our history that would have been a robust quarter. So that kind of tells you the new paradigm that we're operating under $100 million of really repayment activities is the largest and to be robust. That said, what is driving, it is probably bifurcated in two kinds of high level buckets. The first bucket or 50% will be driven by M&A event that the company is being acquired. It is a big driver for some of the refinancings and the second driver of that the next major budget probably a third of it will be driven by bank refinancing is probably a third of it. And the remaining corresponding balance is believe it or not equity. Equity is a big competing process for us and most of us may say why would people want to use equity to displace debt, well where you're getting inflated valuations, it makes a lot of sense to actually overcapitalize your company with equity when you're getting excessive valuations. And so as VC activities remains very robust with $33 billion invested and given that the IPO market is non-existence that meaningful part of that is that private companies have to survive longer privately, which means they consume more capital and they want to be cognizant of dilution. So that becomes a great demand vehicle to mitigate the dilution as you're having to wait longer for exit event with an IPO and M&A event. And we have good sharks in our website. If you look at our Investor deck, we actually have a good data from Dow Jones that shows you, the ventures years of exit from M&A and ventures year of exit from an IPO event for a company. They’re corresponding about 5.6 year and seven years for an IPO to go public.

Okay, thanks for that color. And then kind of following back up on the prepayment fees, and accelerated IT, with $75 million to $100 million of prepayments – early prepayments in the third quarter that's about one-half or two-thirds kind of where lands of the prepayments that you guys received in the second quarter and kind of on pace for what do you guys received in the first quarter. So should we expect, I’m just kind of think for modeling purposes, expect prepayment fees in the third quarter to be about one-half or two-thirds of what we saw in the second quarter or pretty similar to what we saw in the first quarter of this year?

I would have say that right now and it's hard to say for us to answer this question is that it is prepayment coming in that $35 million, $50 million or $100 million and I think that if you assume that it comes in $100 million of prepayment activities for example. I think that a fair number to use is probably $4.5 million to $5.5 million of total fees of which as I said $2 to $3, $3 to $4 are kind of normalized levels of expected normal fees. So I think if you trust me I think $4.5 to $5.5 million our fee income in Q3 is probably the right cadence to look at and maintain.

Okay. That’s definitely helpful. And then you mentioned the high profile IPO Snap and Blue Apron not really doing so well post IPO which is push back the IPO timeframes for some potentially you know smaller companies that probably could stand it IPO but just because those high profile ones not working out well it's push back that timeframe. So does that provide any sort of opportunity for you guys to provide more capital lease company since you're actually going to stay public warrant obviously that's worse from the standpoint of you guys being able to exit any companies you have warrants or equity investments and if they are not going IPO but conversely if companies are staying private longer I would assume they still need to raise capital [audio dip] able to would provide them and that capital either private for longer.

Yes. This is where scale is critical in the business. Where the $1.6 billion balance sheet our ability to have a high concentration positions of $40 million, $50 million, $60 million transactions we get easy absorbed out without any problem and when you want to play and pre-IPO market. You have to have the ability to be offering minimum $500 million transactions sizes to make sense or else you really don't move the needle for these companies. If you are small venture lender in the marketplace you cannot rightfully do that and maintain your rich status on diversified portfolio requirements. We have the capabilities and wherewithal to actually do just that. So we are actively evaluating a lot of those opportunities, but we're also very cognizant of the what we consider to be potentially overvalued companies as well. So it's a significant structural issue when you look at these investments to ensure that we realize the returns that we believe are warranted and what the returns the Company is willing to offer and in that process is a engagement of trying to find the happy point for the borrow in the lender to reach and I think a lot of our activities in Q4 are going to be related to just that.

Okay. And then just one last one if I can this quarter, we talked about it this happening but Sungevity that converted to equity to source spectrum there was an asset purchase with another player for the assets. I just want to know if you guys could give any update on kind of the outlook at the business and I saw it had another write-down this quarter of the equity position so. Any sort of update you guys can provide would be great on that business.

So clearly we’re disappointed on the Sungevity transaction it's a testimony to the dangers of a president with a tweeting interest that wiped out the solar interest so that’s go a company with that - with a tweak that happened sometime in Q4 last year. That said, I would tell you that opposes the merger and emergence out of bankruptcy. The new partners to which we are associated with in the new company. And the trajectory that companies on and the new management and strategy there pursuing we're actually quite encouraged by the future of that company. Now clearly have to execute but I think that the downsizing and rightsizing of Sungevity into the New Co, the New Company. I think that we're probably more optimistic, but we're in the first inning. And but we are encouraged with what we're seeing and we're certainly encouraged by the cost cutting measures and the regarding to profitability that going to be happening here short order of the new company. And so we're pretty optimistic that and 18 to 24 months from now we could see a sizable recovery of our investment and cost basis on that transaction.

Okay. Thank you for taking my questions.

And our next question comes from Aaron Deer of Sandler O’Neill. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon, guys.

Hi, Aaron, how are you?

I am doing well, thank you. Just a few questions may be first, I still trying to I guess reconciled just some your comments with respect to the anticipated loan yields that sounds like that your competitors are being hamstrung by their liquidity and size and that's actually causing something of a pullback in the competitive environment or improvement in the competitive environment. Here you're guiding down on the yield by 75 basis points despite a seven – three Fed rate hikes over the past year. Is there a shift in the types of companies you are financing? Or why does that's creating this downward pressure on the yield?

We refuse to go do second lien or subordinated deals, we wanted to remain senior secured on transaction and we're looking and pursuing [indiscernible] the more higher quality companies are out there. And those high quality companies are still receiving pretty aggressive bank deals that are being done. So I think banks remain fairly aggressive in their nature, and that's where we're not seeing a significant drop in competition. But as you'll see in our overall yield or core yields, we are now down to 12.1% and we’ll think that will trough those yields sometime in the next quarter or two. I think that will end up crossing the overall portfolio somewhere around 11.5%, 11.6% is what our models are telling us right now and then we start bouncing off that low as we start onboarding new loans, but everything that we're seeing in the market will still continue to see further compression in yields.

Okay. And then Mark I have a question on the – it looks like the G&A expense was up sharply from kind of where it's been running, was there anything non-recurring or unusual in there that's going to drop back out in the third quarter?

No my comment would be – again, as the originators originated a lot of that our variable bonus time really kind of kicks in on the salary side of it, on the G&A side of it. We would expect it to really kind of come down just a little bit, but overall we're trying to manage the G&A the best we can with the growing platform of adding future capacity for new hires et cetera So it's one of those that we would expect to maybe come down a little bit level off, but that's where I would expect that to come in.

I want to encourage you, look at what we said in Q4, we talked about expecting our SG&A to rise a couple million dollars in 2017 and we're still on that trajectory. We're controlling a little more, but we still expect that to continue because we're adding headcount. I mean for example, we're actively looking to hire 10 to 12 additional brand new hires in the business as we continue to grow the platform because of loan demand that we are seeing in other areas. So we're very much actively looking to grow.

Okay. There is 10 to 12 new hires and those are all relationships managers not – that's…

No that’s just the volume, that’s both the operations center as well as across the board.

Okay. And then just a quick question on the externalization just in terms of the process, who are the advisors that the board is working with or not?

We have not disclosed any advisors purposely. But you can safely assume that there are well recognized investment banks and had to go through a fairly meticulous RFP process and the banks were selected, but there are well recognized national banks.

Okay. Very good. Thanks for taking my question.

And our last question comes from Leslie Vandegrift with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon. So just a quick question on externalization, I know you said can't really get into the process yet and expected to end about in the third quarter, but in the Q and talked about the risks between the two structures, one of the internally managed risk that has been added is the size, the inability to scale up to size. Is there a max size you're looking at if you stay internal?

There answer is there's no arithmetic max size to internal. It has more to do with product offering and the ability to offer more attractively margin transactions. I think I’ve spoken about this many times in the past. The ability to complement an asset base lending transaction that may price somewhere neighborhood of 7% - 6.5%, 7.5% yield. I don't think we should be doing that out of the existing fund today if you will because it lowers our overall yield and consumes that much more capital. So the ability to have an affiliate relationship with a fund to be able to do transactions in a more attractive margin, lower margin transaction such as ABL would be highly complimentary and accretive to your shareholders at the Hercules we sign. That's the path we decided to take. So growth is a hard one to answer to me. It is a function of the venture capital marketplace and continue access the equity and debt capital markets and as well as sustain the yields that we like to originate in the business to have the margins operate the business and generate ROE’s that we like to fund attractive for our shareholders.

All right. Thank you. And then just one other quick question on that, in that same section the other risk on [San Antonio] that's discuss seems to be the risk of key personnel leaving and then specifically calls at senior management and just curious if there has been offers in senior management in [indiscernible] or if yourself consider that?

I think that we are in a highly competitive environment and when you have the quality of the platform that we have and the high caliber of professional individuals that we have who are highly trained and eventual lending platform and world. The answer is just like our loan portfolio is being assaulted by those looking to take loans off our books. You can imagine that our highly skilled and talented individuals are equally receiving similar offers, which is why you're seeing our compensation go up a little bit, on the SG&A level as well. But we don't have slavery in this country. It was a free agent and we want to make sure that we offer an attractive compensation program that certainly allows us to motivate and retain critical individuals in organization.

All right. Thank you.

And our next question comes from Christopher Nolan of Ladenburg Thalmann. Your line is open.

Manuel, you can give in terms of Coin offerings, Bitcoin and so forth. Is that possibly starting to encroach on companies going public or is that starting to become a factor because it's hard to get more traction in the Wall Street Journal least.

Well Bitcoins are a lot like canaries in the coal mine. It all depends in how you want to interpret it and how you want to look at it. There is governments who believe that Bigcoins is a new future, commerce currency. There are others who are dreadfully fearful of a Bitcoin on traceability of doing that as an example as you may or may not know when to ransomware occurs. The latest methodology of remunerating or compensating is the ransom holder is that they have to then pay using Bigcoins as a way of clearing. So Bigcoins is getting credibility by nefarious activities that are going on in the marketplace. I had to obviously say we've looked at Bigcoins as a currency to also be prepared to look at it and use it. It is unclear whether or not, believe it or not, under the 1940 Act and the custodial requirements that we're required to use for capital. If whether or not we're even regulatory able to use Bigcoins as a currency of choice, but we have to look at it. We are still evaluating it. But there are a lot of regulatory obstacles to make that a currency of choice.

Great, thanks for taking the question.

Thank you. End of Q&A

And ladies and gentlemen, I’m showing no further questions from the phone line. I’d now like to turn the call back over to Manuel for closing remarks.

Well thank you everybody and thanks for joining us on the call today. As you all know, we took a lead to pursue many typical road shows, non-deal road shows in the coming months. We will be at a Private Debt Investor conference in September and we will also be at KBW, Midtown, March – in October, in Manhattan and will also be at the Wells Fargo conference in – I believe it was November of this year as well and we'll be doing a European road trip tour as well with investors. So you can expect to see a lot of us during the next two or three quarters in the marketplace. With that if you would like to meet with management, please free to contact your investment bankers or our own investment IR department, Michael Hara to schedule that. With that, thank you for your time, and thank you operator.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.