Hello and welcome to SuRo Capital’s First Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Melissa, and I will be your coordinator for today’s events. Please note, this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. [Operator Instructions] I’d now like to turn the call over to Evan Schlossman, Principal. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us on today’s call. I am joined by the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SuRo Capital, Mark Klein; and Chief Financial Officer, Allison Green. Please note that a slide presentation corresponding to today’s prepared remarks by management is available on our website at www.surocap.com under Investor Relations, Events and Presentations. Today’s call is being recorded and broadcast live on our website www.surocap.com. Replay information is included in our press release issue today. This call is the property of SuRo Capital and the unauthorized reproduction of this call in any form is strictly prohibited. I would also like to call your attention to customer disclosures in today’s earnings press release recording forward-looking information. Statements made in today’s conference call and webcast may constitute forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or our future performance or financial conditions. These statements are not guarantees of our future performance or future financial condition or results and involve a number of risks, estimates and uncertainties, including the impact of any market volatility that may be detrimental to our business, our portfolio companies, our industry, and the global economy that could cause actual results to differ materially from the plans, intensions and expectations reflected in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including, but not limited to, those described from time to time in the company’s filings with the SEC. Management does not undertake to update this forward-looking statement unless required to do so by law. To obtain copies of SuRo Capital’s latest SEC filings, please visit our website at www.surocap.com or the SEC’s website at sec.gov. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mark Klein.

Thank you, Evan. Before we dive into our portfolio highlights, I would like to start with a brief overview of the broader market environment. The first quarter of 2025 was a particularly challenging period for the public market. The NASDAQ posted its worst quarterly performance since 2022, and major indices such as the Russell 2000 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average also saw significant declines. Ongoing uncertainty around global trade tensions and new tariffs weighed heavily on investor sentiment. This environment also had a direct impact on private market valuations. As always, we determined fair value for our investments using a range of inputs including public market comparables. With the public markets declining, our portfolio company valuations as of March 31st naturally reflected the broader compression. This turbulence intensified in the second quarter. In April, the S&P 500 experienced one of the most volatile stretches in recent memory, despite ending the month down just slightly under 1%. The index fell as much as 12% at its slowest point before sharply rebounding, including a 9.5% surge on April 9th, the largest single-day gain since 2008 following a temporary pause in the Liberation Day tariffs. Meanwhile, the VIX spiked to above 55 reaching its highest level since the onset of COVID. Despite these challenges, we are encouraged by the recent earnings calls from major tech companies which reaffirm their commitment to capital spending even as macro uncertainties persist. We believe our portfolio is well-positioned for when the IPO window reopens. Our companies continue to execute at a high level and many are building fundamental momentum that we believe will drive valuation creation over the long-term. With that context in mind, I’d like to begin by highlighting one of our largest investments, OpenAI, which continues to deliver extraordinary growth and market leadership. In…

Thank you, Mark. I would like to follow Mark’s update with a more detailed review of our first quarter and financial results as of March 31st, as well as a brief highlight of investment activities during and subsequent to quarter-end and our current liquidity position. I will also include an update on our current 6% note due 2026, their repurchase, and a 6.5% convertible note due 2029. As Mark mentioned during the first quarter, we made two follow-on investments. First, on January 31st, we completed an aggregate $300,000 follow-on investment in Orchard Series 1 senior preferred shares and SafeNotes, bringing our total investment in Orchard to approximately $12.8 million. Second, on February 6th, we completed a $1 million follow-on investment in WHOOP through a SafeNote, bringing our aggregate investment in WHOOP to approximately $11 million. Subsequent to quarter-end, we completed a $5 million investment in Plaid Inc. Class A common shares through 1789 Capital Nirvana II LP, an SPV in which SuRo Capital is the Sole Limited Partner. The $5 million does not include a 7% or $350,000 origination fee paid at the time of investment or other capitalized costs of the transaction. Additionally, we will prepay expenses of the SPV on an annual basis. Regarding our liquidity as of quarter end, we ended the quarter with approximately $18.1 million of liquid assets, including approximately $16.2 million in cash and approximately $1.9 million in unrestricted public securities. Not included in our unrestricted public securities are approximately $20.4 million of public securities subject to lockup or other sales restrictions as of quarter end. These include our investments in ServiceTitan and our direct ownership in CoreWeave. As of March 31st, SuRo Capital’s common shares of ServiceTitan were not registered and were therefore subject to certain restrictions on sale or transfer for which…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And we’ll go ahead and take our first question from Brian McKenna of Citizens. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good evening, everyone. So we’re not too far off from the 6-month lockup expiration for ServiceTitan. Can you just remind us what your plan is here with this position? I’m assuming you’ll sell this down in relatively short order as you typically do, assuming no material change in the stock price from here. And then in terms of redeploying that capital, I mean, where are you seeing the best opportunities to invest right now? Is it still in and around the AI theme? Or are there some other emerging themes that are a little bit more compelling today, similar to the flat investment? So any color there would be helpful.

Thanks, Brian. First of all, as we’ve been really consistent about that we don’t view ourselves as holders of public securities. And when a lockup expires, pretty much as you described it, in normalized market conditions, we would exit the position. And from there, where we would deploy it, I’d say we’re seeing a whole host of opportunities, Brian. As you and I’ve discussed on these calls, we are probably seeing more opportunities now than ever before. Clearly, AI and AI adjacent companies are in an immense opportunity set that we are looking at. We continue to look in the fintech areas and some of the other and some of the consumer areas. But AI, AI adjacent, which covers a wide swath, is a lot of what we’re seeing right now.

Thank you. Our next question is from Marvin Fong with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Great. Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. Just like a little more color on the discount for the shares that weren’t registered. Just out of from my own edification, is this something that’s kind of standard, the percentage discount, or is this something that, that is subjective in case by case? I just kind of love to understand that process. And then, the second question, we’d just love if you have any thoughts on the nonprofit situation at OpenAI that, the news in the like, say, the last 24 hours, it sounds like the nonprofit will continue to be involved in the management and ownership. So any thoughts you’d have there, we’d love to hear it. Thanks.

Thanks, Marvin, and thanks for your support. I’ll let Allison answer the discount question. And then, what I would say in respect to the OpenAI, we’re all reading the news at the same time. I don’t think that the nonprofit being involved is going to impact the value of the company for the public – as it goes to become a for-profit organization. I certainly don’t think it was read as particularly negative or particularly impactful. And, clearly, we discussed in our prepared remarks, with the OpenAI story is unfolding extremely rapidly and very exciting, the traction they get in the ongoing progress that they’re making. In respect to the discount, I’ll let Allison to respond.

Wonderful. Thanks, Marvin, and thank you for your question. Regarding the discounts that have been applied to CoreWeave and ServiceTitan, those are specifically related to the fact that the shares that we own or that are owned on our behalf are not registered at this time as of March 31st. They were not registered upon IPO. At the point when they become registered by the company and the company’s transfer agent, we will remove that discount.

Thank you. Our next question is from Alex Paris with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I guess, I’ll ask my question about rules and process regarding return of capital to shareholders under your corporate structure. Obviously, ServiceTitan and CoreWeave and those shares are registered and will be sold presumably at a profit. At some point, you’ll need to return that cash to shareholders one way or another in the form of a dividend, cash or stock, things like that. If you sold those shares in the third or fourth quarters of this year, when would that dividend be approved and paid? Would it be 3 months later, 6 months later, that kind of thing?

Perfect. Thanks, Alex. And thank you for your ongoing interest and support in our company. As we’ve done in the past, and you’re well aware, we try to be extremely communicative in respect to our dividend strategy or dividend policy. And as we get clarity to net realized gains, we try to communicate that as expeditiously as possible to the public, because it’s important for investors to understand that. We would – if we were in the position to have net realized gains by the end of the year, we would make a distribution by the end of the year. If there was some residual distribution that we’d have to make, we’d make it early in Q1. But, as you’ve seen in the past, we usually get way out in front of it for investors and tell everybody how we view it and how we plan to distribute that, how and when we plan to distribute those distributions.

Thank you. And we do have a follow-up from Brian McKenna of Citizens. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thanks for the follow-up. Apologize if I missed this, but I believe OpenAI’s valuation roughly doubled since you invested in the company. So why is the investment only marked up about 60%? Did 100% of this markup flow through in the quarter? Are you applying some kind of a discount to the stated valuation post the last round, or is it something else? Just trying to get some more color here.

Yeah. No problem, Brian. Well, you had $157 billion post-money valuation, and the pre-money valuation this round is $260 billion. So the headline is approximately a double if you go from pre-money to post-money, but the actual increase is quite a bit less.

Thank you very much. I would like to turn the call back over to Mark Klein for any closing remarks.

Well, again, thank you, everyone, for joining the call. We greatly appreciate your interest in our company. To all of you that ask questions, thank you again for your interest and support, and feel free to reach out to us through our investor portal that would be our pleasure to be communicative with you. Thank you again for all. Appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Once again, that does conclude today’s conference. We do appreciate your participation.