Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to TriplePoint Venture Growth's Q2 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines have been placed in a listen-only. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period and instructions will follow at that time. This conference call is being recorded and a replay of the call will be available as an audio webcast on the TriplePoint Venture Growth website. I would now like to turn over to Harold Zagunis, Chief Financial Officer at TriplePoint Venture Growth. Mr. Zagunis please go ahead.

Thank you, Cintel. And thank you everyone for joining us today. We're pleased to share with you our results of the second quarter of 2015. Here with me are Jim Labe, 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 call, we may 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 to differ materially from these statements. We do not undertake any obligation to update our forward looking statements or projections unless required by law. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings please visit our Web site at www.tpvg.com. With that, I'll turn it over to Jim.

Thanks Harold and welcome everyone. We had another exceptional quarter which reflects our BDC highly specialized and differentiated approach to venture lending's and the strong market conditions which are out there. As we look ahead given all these factors in our venture lending model we see a very strong finish to the year. This quarter's performance is also a reflections of our efforts to build more than just a great portfolio of TPVG we're building a franchise. I believe we make great progress since our IPO on March 2014. Our playbook building TPVG's franchise is no different in the plan we put together 10 years ago when we started our sponsors TriplePoint capital which quickly became and is a widely recognized leader in the venture lending industry today. TriplePoint will continue to be tunnel focused on our powerful differentiators what we call the four R’s; relationships, reputation, references and return. We continue to develop and maintain relationships with a highly select group of venture capital investors. These include firms associated with some of the biggest tech and life science success of the past several decades. Some of which we work with now almost 30 years. We continue to protect and extend our reputation we see to make every VCN entrepreneur we worked with a reference to work with us again and again. And we strive to generate a growing portfolio with attractive risk adjusted returns. Our BDC is still young we're only year and half old. We are patiently intelligent we making that happen at TPVG. We're building another great franchise within the TriplePoint capital platform, more contribution to being the long term industry leader and innovator. Turning to the Q2 performance our net investment income or NII was 6.3 million, $0.38 per share. We once again exceeded our dividend…

Thank you, Jim and good afternoon everyone. We continue to see strong demand for venture growth stage lending with 62 million of signed term sheets in Q2 another 42.5 million signed so far in Q3 and the pipeline continues to grow. After we received the proceeds from our follow-on equity offering at the beginning of Q2 we began adding new commitments to TPVG with 57.5 million entered into Q2 along with 50 million of new commitments so far in Q3. During Q2 we funded investments for 7.5 million in two companies, made 500,000 equity investment in one company and acquired warrants valued at 600,000 in five companies. Our total weighted average portfolio yield excluding prepayments was 14.3% and has been greater than 14% for every single quarter since our IPO. During the quarter three of our customer prepaid there outstanding loans totaling 47 million which brought our total weighted average portfolio yield to 17.9%. So far in Q3 we have funded another 10 million of investment and have visibility on more. At quarter's end our unfunded commitments totaled 147.5 million to eight companies of which 17 million is depended on the company's reaching certain milestones before the debt commitments becomes available to them. 35 million will expire during 2015 and 112 million will expire during 2016 if not drawn prior to exploration. As of today our unfunded commitments total 177.5 million to 8 companies. Since these commitments may expire without being drawn upon unfunded commitments do not necessarily represents future cash requirement or future earnings assets for the company. Overtime we expect generally about 75% of our gross unfunded commitments to eventually be drawn. Moving on to credit quality as of June 30 the weighted average internal credit rating of the debt investment portfolio was 2.01, up from 2.06 at…

Thank you, Sajal. For the second quarter, our total investment and other income was $11.6 million representing the weighted average portfolio yield of 17.9% on our investment for the period held. Of the 17.9% yield, 10.6% was from cash coupon payments, 6:10s of a percent was from the original issue discount of upfront facility fees and warrants, 3.1% was from the accretion of end of term payments, and 3.6 was from the impact of prepayment. Excluding the impact of prepayment, the weighted average portfolio yield for the quarter was 14.3%, generally consistent with that of previous quarters. Our expenses this quarter were $5.3 million compared to $4.9 million in the prior quarter. Our base management fee was $1.4 million, our income incentive fee and capital gain incentive fee totaled $1.6 million, our debt expenses were $1.2 million and our administrative and general expenses were $1.1 million. For the second quarter, we recorded net investment income and core investment income of approximately $6.3 million or $0.38 per share. I would like to remind you that core net investment income is a non-GAAP financial measure. We believe core net investment income is an important measure of the investment income that we will be required to distribute each year since capital gains incentive fees are accrued based on unrealized gains, but are not earned until realized gains accrued. For a reconciliation of core net investment income to net investment income, please see the press release, we issued this afternoon. Keep in mind, these per share numbers reflect the impact of a higher weighted share count than in previous quarters due to the equity offering at the end of March. This quarter we had net unrealized gains in our investment of $0.8 million or $0.05 per share. Net unrealized gains were primarily due to…

Thanks again Harold. At this point, we'll be happy to take your questions. Operator, could you please open up the line?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is come from Douglas Harter with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Hi, this is actually Sam Chao filling in for Doug Harter. Just wanted to go back to the prepays, I mean you guys had a higher prepay level, I was just wondering, how we should think about the trends, I mean you guys did kind of cover this in the prepared remarks, but what you've been seeing post 2Q been kind of consistent with what you expect during the second half of the year?

This is Sajal, I’ll answer your questions. So, there is no overall trend with regards to prepays. I think, consistent with the guidance that we said earlier in the year and we expected prepay to start with typically one a quarter and so as we looked at the rest of the year, we still expect that guidance.

Got it. And then my second question was -- I know, you guys are focused on disciplined growth, given the discount to NAV you guys are currently trading at, is there a point where you guys might actually consider a share buyback?

So, I think, we’ll first look at the market conditions and so we've looked at strong conditions in the venture capital market, we look at the strong demand for debt and we look -- we see a strong demand for -- strong backlog have unfunded commitments, we see strong portfolio yield with 17.9% this quarter. So, I think -- and we know that again we see strong demand for the rest of the year. So, I think at this point we see the opportunity to -- in a controlled fashion deploy the capital in a timely way and generate great returns. If we didn’t see that then we would definitely consider. But I think it's again premature at this time and again we're building a franchise and we see quality deal flow and we think this is again one step along the way of building a great business.

The next question comes from Jonathan Block with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.

Starting first perhaps with a view, not just on earnings per say, but on stable earnings growth that generated through leverage. Sajal you mentioned that it is your intension to continue to grow the portfolio which we would expect. But there is a choice right, one could grow the portfolio utilizing leverage or what we see -- is the term note issuance or the retail bond issuance which comes at a heavy price at times at the expense of profitability on a going forward basis. So trying to understand what the reason for that issuance really was right. The system that buy that are always happy to do issuance at any time and so why jeopardize or lower profitability now before we’re above book value because it just creates a greater divide for you pick up at higher interest cost.

It's a great question, happy to answer. So I think we'll start off with by saying just as we looked as a result of the capital raise and the equity base, our historic track record of having our targeted leverage ratio between 0.6 and 0.8. So I think the first benefit is this allows us to get back to that target leverage ratio given the size of our existing credit facilities of 200 million. We look at the fact that there is been talk about interest rate going up and down we're actually expecting -- everyone is expecting to see them. And so the timing to lock in fixed rate capital make sense to do that now. Again we also look to the strong demand for debt in our business and in our marketplace and our ability to deploy the capital quickly and to generate fantastic return again 14% without prepayment for every single quarter since the IPO is another benefit. We also look to our ability to diversify our capital sources in particular as we prepare for renewal on our warehouse facility towards the end of the year. So those are all important factors and I think we also look at the fact as we look at the SPIC and our ability to have the capital to contribute to it when that process moves forward. And the fact that you can't necessarily time when markets are open and so we felt again in the grand scheme of building a franchise we felt the market conditions were appropriate.

Okay understand and in particular comments related to the SBIC. So perhaps maybe one additional enhancement as it relates to the retail note issuance. Give us a sense -- you mentioned that you are currently in compliance as a result of your shells [ph] being effective. That’s a point in time what we're trying to understand is where does this rule book kind of really settle is it asset coverage or is it liquidity to cover unfunded commitment. And if it's liquidity to cover unfunded commitments -- we notice un-fund commitments continuing to grow, now those do term into funding. But we're trying to see how you feel on managing the business when we see one venture lender lowering unfunded commitment, yet here they continue to expand. So how investors understand the difference in approach and perhaps may something I and everybody else is missing.

Sure I'll answer first then Harold and Jim please. So I would take first our unfunded commitments have gone down. So you look quarter over quarter and so I think managing unfunded commitments is important and as we said it’s something we're being particularly proactive about we're not saying that we're looking to grow unfunded commitments and to expand them beyond the current level. Again I think it's an important nuance that we include both milestone base and non-milestone base unfunded commitments because that’s the guidance from the SEC. So from our perspective I think it's still a working progress with regards to SEC, with regards to where they come out finally in the final rule book. But I think to your point, I think they are focusing on both comments or both items, both the asset coverage and on ensuring people have liquidity or match liquidity at the time that they file registration statement.

I think the operational work here on from the whole subject is, this is a working progress. It’s dynamic, there is a lot of noise out there. This is something that just corrupt the last few months and we're not going to run the business based in a certain thing that just is a dynamic moving target here, we’re going to run it for the long term and the better venture back deals and their needs.

But again we are encouraging or we are structuring our deals with either smaller upfront commitments or requiring fundings that close. So again we’re being very cognizant of wanting to increase fundings and not necessarily have a greater than what we have backlog of unfunded commitments.

And then just as we step forward, you mentioned that you’re planning on having the NAC effectively spilled out or with the former application being submitted for a green light letter by the end of this quarter. I am just curious so I mean so would it be your intention -- normally this isn’t something that you kind of prefund -- would it be your intention to try to leverage before that and then access capital or I think you did mentioned that you accessed liquidity to fund a potential $37.5 million for un-eventual SBIC license, getting it started and build. What’s the game plan there now that you’ve met and had discussions with folks at the SPA?

So I think that we can’t control the process with the SPA and so I think to the extent that it moves in aggressive time frame then we will definitely use the capital that we’ve raised and we’re encouraged by at least the time guides that they’ve given us. But we also see strong market conditions, two great company, we had some great names that we added to the portfolio this particularly in the pipeline of yielding assets and more in equity gains is strong. So at the same time we also want to use that capital to generate fantastic returns to the investors as well. So, I think whichever comes first we’d like to use our proceeds intelligently that way but we think both are -- we were encouraged by the outlook for both.

And then just last question, just because equity capital issuance is extremely important to many investors and while it is absolutely clear that when you making loans at rates at which you’re making them, then good things can happen. From an NOI perspective as those funding get on balance sheet. The question investors would have and are likely to going to pose to you over the next several months is, is it your intention to raise equity capital in the event that you are below your target leverage and your perspective on over-equitization of the balance sheet today? Let’s assume that fundings don’t occur, guidance on equity capital issuance before deployment would be helpful and thank you for taking my questions.

So as you know, we don’t have shareholder approval to raise equity below that. And so our long term goal is to, like we did before, prove the business model. We raised equity recently and the Baby Bond so we will put that capital to work and get back to our target level of leverage between 0.6 and 0.8 and then we’ll see, we’ll take some opportunities to look at what our options are at that point.

And also to add on top of that again, we’ve heard the feedback too from investors and our perspective as well is, we believe we deserve to trade at a great premium and so we recognize not pulling the trigger the second you trade in the band where you need to and so that’s important to us. We believe we should trade at a significantly higher premium and we have the patience to make that happen.

[Operator Instructions] That concludes this afternoon’s question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Jim Labe for some concluding remarks.

Thanks operator. I’ll close again by saying and expressing my appreciation to all of you for your continued interest and support in TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp. We will continue to build our franchise and portfolio and remain disciplined and focused on what matters most to us, which again is what we call the four R’s; reputation, relationships, references, and of course returns. Thanks again and we’ll speak with you soon.

That concludes today’s call. You may now disconnect.