Greetings and welcome to the Rand Capital Corporation Fourth Quarter 2019 Financial Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Karen Howard, Investor Relations for Rand Capital Corporation. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Melissa, and good afternoon everyone. We appreciate your time today for Rand's fourth quarter 2019 financial results conference call. On the line with me today are Pete Grum, our Chief Executive Officer; and Dan Penberthy, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. If you have a copy of the release that crossed the wire this morning as well as the slides that will accompany our conversation today, if not, they are both available on our website at randcapital.com. If you would turn to the slide deck and turn to Slide 2, let me point out some important information. As you are likely aware, we may make some forward-looking statements during this presentation and also during the question-and-answer session. 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. These risks and uncertainties and other factors are provided in the earnings release as well as in other documents filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You can find the information on our website or at sec.gov. And with that, let me turn over to Pete, who is going to give an update on the status of the transactions with East Asset Management and then summarize the 2019 performance including providing some color on the newest investments in our portfolio that were contributed by East. Then Dan will follow with more details regarding financials. Pete?

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for your time today. We are happy to have this opportunity to summarize 2019, which proved to be a very exciting year. You can turn to Slide 3 where I highlight the transaction with East Asset Management for East as we refer to it and the current status of the related activity. As you know, we closed on the transaction in November. We issued about 8.3 million shares of Rand common stock to East exchange of 25 million of asset. The 25 million consisted of approximately 9.5 million of investments and about 15.5 million in cash. We have also established Rand Capital Management or RCM to serve as the external registered investment adviser to Rand. The Rand employees have become employees of our RCM. We also during the this private transaction added two new board members Adam Gusky and Ben Godley while two of our longstanding board members finished their terms and Shane [indiscernible] and Ross Kenzie. We're continuing the process to transform Rand into a regulated investment company or RIC. Recall the one of the benefits of being a RIC is our investment income and capital gain will no longer be subject to U.S. federal income tax. To accomplish this, we need to distribute our excess earnings and profits to our shareholders. Last week, our board declared a special dividend of $23.7 million or $1.62 per share, which will be payable on a combination of cash and shares of Rand common stock. As we previously communicated an indication of confidence that has potential value, the members of the Rand Board, management and East intend to elect to receive an all stock dividend. Shareholders as of the April 2nd record date, will receive a mail with the details included in there an election form on…

Thanks Pete and good afternoon everyone. If you could please turn to Slide 15, I'll start with the net asset value per share or NAV. As Pete mentioned, we started the year with a net asset value at 366 per share. As you can see on the chart, NAV decreased $0.73 per share over the last year. The decline is primarily attributable to the $0.83 per share dilutive effect of issuing the 8.3 million shares to East. This is partially offset by the gain on the sale of our equity investment in Microcision. Slide 16 as a summary of our operating performance for the 2019 and 2018 fourth quarters and the full calendar years. Total investment income in the fourth quarter of 2019 was $985,000, up from 668,000 in the same period last year. The $317,000 increase or 47% included approximately 76,000 of incremental interest income, 70,000 of incremental dividend income and a 170,000 of incremental non-recurring fee income. For 2019, investment income was up 29% over 2018. Our fourth quarter expenses were $726,000 in 2019 and $684,000 in 2018. Excluding the costs related to the East transaction, fourth quarter expenses were $645,000 in 2018 and $581,000 in 2018. The 2018 period benefited from a $50,000 bad debt recovery I should note. Also I want to point out that the 2019 fourth quarter includes cost for the base management fees payable to RCM, our newly established external registered investment advisor of which we are now employees. Going forward into 2020, this will be a regular fee and certain expenses previously incurred by RAMs are now incurred by RCM. These would include such things as compensation and general office expenses. For all of 2019, total expenses were 2.8 million this compares with 2.2 million in 2018. Excluding costs related to these…

Yes.

Thank you for your time and attention this afternoon. I know it's [indiscernible] market, I want to thank everyone and to appreciate your support and we're excited about 2020 what it holds for Rand. Thanks again and have a great day.

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.