Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to TriplePoint Venture Growth's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal year 2015 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] 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 the call over to Harold Zagunis, Chief Financial Officer of TriplePoint Venture Growth. Mr. Zagunis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Connor [ph]. And thank you everyone for joining us today. We are pleased to share with you our results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 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 this call we will 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 laws. 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 website at www.tpvg.com. With that, I'll turn it over to Jim.

Thanks, Harold, and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter and fiscal yearend earnings call. We had another good quarter and a very strong fiscal year. As in our last earnings call, I'm going to focus on the key topics that are on our minds. Then I'll turn over to Sajal and Harold for a more in-depth review of the portfolio on quarterly results, and then open it up to Q&A. So let me first start with some facts, because I think they really speak for themselves. We are the only venture lending BDC to cover its dividend with net investment income in 2015 and in 2014. This is particularly notable given the fact that we also did a first time follow-on equity offering last year and also didn't have to rely on spillover income from 2014 to cover the dividend. We are the only venture lending BDC to significantly grow net investment income or NII by almost 70%, from $12.8 million in 2014, the period from our IPO through December, to $22 million in fiscal 2015. We are the only venture lending BDC to increase portfolio yield. In fact, it went from 15.4% in 2014 to 17% in 2015. We are the only venture lending BDC that has also not had to ask for or go back to shareholders for approval to raise equity capital below NAV, net asset value. We're also the only venture lending BDC with a true global platform across the venture capital spectrum. TriplePoint Capital, our sponsor, which is behind this platform, benefits us and our shareholders in several ways. First, the relationships our sponsor has with select venture capital investors and the resulting deal flow that we get from it. One hundred percent of our deal flow in 2015 was originated directly from these relationships…

Thanks, Jim, and good afternoon everyone. We continue to see strong demand for venture growth stage lending, having signed $177 million of term sheets at TriplePoint Capital in Q4, and the pipeline continues to grow. During Q4 we closed $70 million of new commitments with seven companies. For the fiscal year, we signed $427 million of term sheets and closed $214 million of new commitments with 15 companies, starting in Q2 after our equity follow-on price in Q1. During Q4 we funded $3.7 million of debt investments to five companies and acquired warrants valued at $300,000 in five companies as well. For the fiscal year, we funded $102 million of debt and equity investments, again beginning in Q2 after our equity follow-on price in Q1. The $30 million of fundings in Q4 were offset by $17 million in prepays. As a result of the pre-pays, our portfolio yield was 17.9%, up from 17.5% in Q3. Without prepays, our portfolio yield was 15.4%. As Jim mentioned, for the fiscal year, our portfolio yield was 17%, compared to 15.4% for fiscal year 2014. For the full year we had six prepays, totaling $73 million. So far in Q1 we have closed $75 million of new deals, funded $31 million, and have had $25 million in prepays. At year's end, our unfunded commitments totaled $190 million to 12 companies, of which $50 million is dependent upon the company's reaching certain business or time-based milestones before the debt commitment becomes available to them. $165 million will expire during 2016, with $100 million actually expiring during the first half of this year. As we have discussed before, unfunded commitments are nothing new to the venture lending industry. We oftentimes enter into debt commitments with an obligor shortly after they closed an equity round, as it…

Thank you, Sajal. For the fourth quarter, our total investment and other income was $11.4 million. As noted earlier, this represented a weighted average portfolio yield of 17.9%, of which 10.4% was from coupon payments, 0.8% was from the accretion of upfront facility fees and warrants, 4.2% was from the accretion of end-of-term payments, and 2.5% was from prepayments. Our yield this quarter excluding prepayments was 53.5% [ph]. Our expenses this quarter were $5.4 million, which was higher than the $4.6 million in the prior quarter, primarily as pre-incentive fee income resulted in higher incentive fee. Our base management fee was $1.4 million. Our income incentive fee and capital gains incentive fee totaled $1.2 million. Our debt expenses were $1.8 million. And our administrative and general expenses were just under $1 million. For the fourth quarter we recorded net investment income of $6 million or $0.36 per share, and core net investment income of $5.8 million or $0.35 per share. I 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 occur. For a reconciliation of core net investment income to net investment income, please see the press release we issued this afternoon. This quarter we had net unrealized losses at our investment of $6 million or $0.36 per share. The net unrealized losses were primarily due to $4 million of net unrealized losses on debt investments due to changes in discount rates used to fair value the investments, $1.7 million of net unrealized losses and warrants, and $300,000 of net unrealized losses on equity investments. Our…

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

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Jon Bock with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Thank you very much for taking my questions, and appreciate the commentary guys, particularly in what is a difficult equity market. Let's start first as it relates to liquidity. So I believe there was about $190 million of unfunded commitments as of 12/31. You made $70 million of unfunded commitments or new commitments to portfolio close effectively this quarter. So, right around, I'd imagine, close to the available liquidity that you have. Now, Sajal, I know that you have $100 million coming on the first half, and so that helps, but give us a sense of where you want to run unfunded commitments because, as I also read, I know a majority of those unfunded commitments are not subjected to milestones, and so I'm curious in light of the discussion we had with the commission, you know, you had with the commission, others had with the commission throughout 2015, where you really want to run that given that you wouldn't want to become cash-strapped if everyone realized they wanted to draw in an unforeseen event?

Yeah, Jon, good afternoon. Yeah, I would say there's no fixed number target from our perspective. It's a function of balancing amounts available under our credit lines, near-term cash, as we said, prepays, principal amortizations, as well as the other element as guidance from our portfolio companies in terms of utilization. We mentioned that we have $100 million that expire during the first half of this year, actually $33 million has already expired so far. And so we've also had about $25 million prepays as well, so, extra cash. But I would say there isn't a fixed number. We want to be smart and thoughtful, obviously never get over our ski tips, but also again manage to customer expectations in terms of utilization in their facilities.

Okay. Then the next, and I appreciate the commentary on Virtual Instruments, and this is a name that, you know, we had an opportunity and others I'd say just because there's some public commentary on it, to learn a bit more about. And what I'm interested in, as you move it into a category four, which I think is Orange, as you mentioned, but yet the loan's still at 94. And so when you say that there is assumption of a loan, would that mean that that assumption of the loan comes at that 94 price, are you paid out at par? A bit more of discussion on how that transpires only because we'd heard of layoffs, etcetera, that was out in the public domain. And just because it's a sizable investment, it's not the whole kit and caboodle, but it's one that's important for investors to learn about. More color there on why you can keep it 94 but then downgrade the credit quality of the asset --

Jon, great question. So I think it's an ongoing situation, so, obviously, a little bit limited in terms of what we can say as the situation develops and finalizes, but we feel good. I think to answer your bigger-picture question. So from our perspective, when a company assumes debt, it assumes the loan in full. When it comes to fair-valuing of a loan, you need to take into account market rates, if you were to do a deal today, what the appropriate return associated with those things are. And so you need to, in all -- with regards to fair value. And so that explains a little bit of the difference there. But again, assumption in full of our loan, but again it's subject to closing shareholder approval and other factors and it's an ongoing situation, but then again obviously taking into account market rates and things like that when we fair value alone.

Okay. So then going to the prepayments for a moment and, you know, so about $50 million prepayments for the quarter, great; big boost to portfolio yields, great. But Harold, what was the amount of prepayment fee income that came in this quarter? I understand the 2.5% was the annualized on a cost of debt amount. What was the actual prepayment fee income that came in?

Well, as Sajal mentioned, most of that came, was $1.2 million, from the amount of income we recognized due to, you know, that we reversed the unrealized gain of $1.2 million from prior quarter that was included in our loss, and now is the primary income that we generated from prepayment.

The other loan was a more mature loan, so there was only incremental amounts for that prepay that -- for the other loan that prepaid in the quarter.

Okay. So we shouldn't look at that 2.5 as necessarily indicative on the 16 that prepaid this quarter, which I was kind of wondering --

Yes. As we've talked before, you know, prepayments are very specific to the terms of the loan, the kind of tenure of the loan. So, a loan that prepays early in its life will generally earn us a higher return than a loan that's close to maturity date. So there's no specific number you can apply to the current number of prepayments, may or may not be consistent with last quarter.

Okay, okay. And then, Sajal, in terms of the need, obviously venture capitalists are going to be looking for more and more debt dollars to help bridge investments. Of course you also mentioned that high-quality investments are still receiving funding. How do you balance kind of the opportunity set between TPC and TPVG? I know there's a line of demarcation, but I also noticed that you outlined $177 million done at TriplePoint Capital as opposed to what's actually been done on the BDC, which is low, understandably, because you have lower capacity for the moment. But just --

Jon, just to clarify that, that's -- the term sheets are signed by TriplePoint Capital and then they're allocated during the process. So that did not go to TPC. Those are all the venture growth deals that we as a platform signed in Q4, the majority of which should go to TPVG, if not went to TPVG, based on TPVG's funding capacity at the time of allocation which again we're allocating venture growth deals to TPVG.

I got it. So when it comes to looking at that 177 number, because the BDC has capacity, should we always read that that was basically what went in to TriplePoint Venture Growth? Like what would be the --

Right. That's -- did go, will go, or is going. Because obviously not all of it closes in a quarter, and so there's some element that spills over into the next year. There's always a small percentage that during the process you may -- the transaction size may reduce or there may be some other reasons for the numbers to change a bit. But yes, you're correct, that amount generally includes amounts that has been closed by TPVG or will be closed, unless it's otherwise reduced or adjusted during the diligence and documentation process.

Okay, got it. And then, Jim, just a comment over also on the need for capital for venture firms. Where would you describe the opportunity set is, I'd say, the most attractive for new capital, for venture growth stage, be it life science, be it later-stage technology, or -- and so that's one. And then the second part of the question would be, where are the areas that you find the most over-exposed to loss, right? When valuations compressed, it's inevitable and no one expects anyone here to bat a thousand, but what we do expect is that there's some amount of transparency as to where the trouble spots lie. And that's my last question. Thank you.

Yeah. I thought I was going to escape the questions, Jonathan, you were leaving me out, although I probably could have tackled some of the earlier ones. So I think you correctly see, and hopefully I made it clear, that the demand is very strong, the pipeline is strong, particularly in the tech sector these days. And during -- the business has never been about this quarter, that quarter, what sector is in, what sector is out. Last quarter I could have talked about perhaps storage and virtual reality and certain areas. This time I could talk about other various sectors. But, you know, a lot of times that's driven is what's happening in the public comps, and basically that's what's going to drive a particular, you know, sector, a certain investment area that folks are focused on. But at the end of the day, we try not to manage this on a quarter-to-quarter basis sector by sector. It's more long-term trends. And it gets back to what the better venture capitalists are investing in, in the tech sector these days, and we're following them on a more passive basis. So I hate to get into specific tech areas quarter to quarter. I just think it's not --

I'd only add that, you know, historically, life sciences hasn't been a big part of our business. We aren't seeing as much life science investment activity by our select sponsors. And so we will generally say, for our sponsors, they're not particularly active in life sciences, but continue to be particularly active in tech as they've always been, as indicated by again the amount of fresh capital that they've raised.

Thank you.

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

Okay. I'll close again by expressing my appreciation to all of you for your continued interest and support in TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC. Thanks and we look forward to speaking with you again soon.

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