Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the TriplePoint Venture Growth's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines have been placed in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' remarks there will be a question-and-answer period and instructions will follow at that time. This conference 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 Trevor Martin. Mr. Martin, please go ahead.

Thanks, Danny. And thank you everyone for joining us today. Here with me are Jim Labe, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board; and Sajal Srivastava, President and Chief Investment Officer; to share with you the results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2016. 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 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 website at www.tpvg.com. With that, I'll turn it over to Jim.

Thanks, Trevor and welcome everyone for our fourth quarter and year-end earnings call. Last quarter, I used the baseball analogy to describe the venture lending business and our strategy at TPVG. Our business has always been about the nine inning game of the season as a whole. It's not about an inning or two here or there or a quarter two. You need to know when to swing and went to take a pitch. You need a talented team, great coaches, proven game plan, and patience to be the winner. But we scored some more runs here in the fourth quarter 2016 and we really have a nice lead going into 2017. But what I am most excited about is that the top of the line-up is now getting ready to bat here in 2017 and we believe we're poised to sweep the series. Why do we feel so good for the series? First, our select VC investors continue to attract much of the capital flowing into the VC asset class. And they are actively deploying this fresh capital into new and existing high growth technology companies. Second, our reputation, brand and track record in the market continues to resonate and differentiate us. We're seeing record levels of inbound increase and referrals of high quality venture backed companies. Every single one of them is looking for debt to grow and accelerate to businesses. Third, the trend is really strong and continues for M&A an IPO as we start getting into 2017. This is backed up by activity. There seems to be a pick up that is on its way for the industry as a whole. This includes the one high profile tech IPO, and the several high profile acquisitions we experience in our portfolio during the last two quarters, and…

Thank you, Jim and good afternoon everyone. To reinforce Jim's point, we see strong demand for venture growth stage lending having signed $128 million of term sheets in Q4 and closed $93 million of new commitments with six companies. For the fiscal year, we signed $325 million of term sheets and closed $287 million of new commitments with 17 companies. Two new companies we added to the portfolio in Q4, include CrowdStrike a GreenChef. CrowdStrike is a company that received great press last year during the elections. They are next generation cyber security firm started by George Kurtz, the former Chief Technology Officer of McAfee that has raised more than 150 million of equity from Accel and Warburg Pincus and Google Capital. CrowdStrike was called in by the Democratic National Committee to respond to a suspected breach, and according to CrowdStrike they immediately identified the two allegedly state sponsored intruders and their software remediated the breach. This is a very high profile situation and a great win for CloudStrike. GreenChef is a subscription based certified organic meal kit provider tailored for 30 minutes food prep and cooking time. The company is the only provider with a certified organic vertically integrated supply chain, very large barrier to entry. The company hasn't publicly disclosed much detail about its equity financing history, other than its lead investor is new enterprise associates. During Q4, we funded a record $64.5 million of debt investments to eight companies and acquired warrants valued at $705,000 in eight companies. We funded 79% of the debt investments during the last two weeks of December. So we didn't see any meaningful contribution from them in Q4. For the fiscal year, we funded $158.5 million debt and equity investments to 14 companies. So far in Q1 17, we've closed $22 million…

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

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Jonathan Bock with Wells Fargo Securities.

Good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. And I very much appreciate the baseball analogy Jim and Sajal. So may be talking about long-term gain here for a moment. We understand right now we have been in prepays the dividend it's about $0.30, you know $0.30 relative to the $0.36 or slightly below. You've got undistributed income that can fill the gap, you got momentum. We're still wondering how long would you go with a series of underpayments of the dividend? More importantly, you believe the current level of the dividend is more than sustainable without any additional equity issuance from this point on now that you're at full leverage. I understand that prepays will come and you've had some great successes, but oftentimes folks look at it its dividend level that if it's, well in excess of earnings power, stable earnings power not prepayment fee related that can cause some consternation in the event that the markets gyrate the way they did at quarter two. So talk about the long term stability of the dividend today relative to your earnings power without the prepayment fee?

Yes, no. Jonathan this is Sajal here. I think we look at it a couple ways. And so as we look at it with regards to ignoring prepayments, which again prepayments are regular part of the business but I understand the certainty associated with current cash pay and of turns and things of that nature. So at the high end of our target leverage ratio with the current portfolio yield we cover the dividend at $0.36 with the funded portfolio on its own ignoring the benefits of prepays.

Great.

So now understanding that visibility and the guidance we've always given at least one prepay a quarter and I think we're going to extend that outlook for 2017 as well. Given the prepay activity that we've had so far already this year, you know interestingly enough we cover our dividend at the $0.36, at the very low end of our target leverage ratio. So to an extent that we grow the portfolio even more in 2017 or we have additional prepay activity which we expect. We'll then actually exceed our dividend ratio. So I think our perspective is again, high end of the leverage ratio we cover the dividend without the benefit of prepays but there are regular recurring part of business but you can't necessarily control exactly when they occur and we obviously have some dynamic because of that with the slippage from Q4 to Q1. But again with the [indiscernible] of 14% yielding portfolio it gives us a lot of room.

Now that's good and we also see that in the environments where there is heavy prepay activity that will force leverage down you'll benefit from the earnings whereas in environment where they're less now that you've fully deployed the portfolio are you like going to cover it? So thank you. Then Jim another question and your comments about being on the field and to call in capital resounded those are very important points to folks. Walk us through for perhaps the differences is it that the sponsor community which you work and have known the biggest and the best for a long time. Is there just a difference in terms of sponsor activity based on who the sponsor is? Is it merely a function of your long clean tech are life science, which years is -- that those are the sectors that are amongst the most - they are having the most heartburn given the new administration. Talk about just that but the market element where you're saying, we're going to grow is it a function of who you focus on and where you focus or is it is it is it something different?

Well, there are couple of different parts to that. But I guess I would boil it down by saying there's a, I don't want to say, I want to say a renewed optimism here in terms of the outlook 2017 particularly in the technology sectors and again you can look at things like Snap, AppDynamics and so forth, but what I think of is are select venture capital investors. Collectively, last year they raised just under $15 billion, collectively just some of our select sponsors. And outside if I think around $40 billion - $42 billion overall by venture capital fund raised this last year, so a lot of first capital out there. These are select investors that have some very interesting IPOs lining up, some acquisitions and it's I don't want to say good times in technology, I want to say it's a normalized time in technology and in particular you start adding that up with our brand, our reputation, our relationship limited to next to no competition and a record pipeline that we have and demand for debt. I want to get above the ski tips but it's pretty optimistic on these fronts.

And then, speaking about optimism right, earnings, leverage etcetera; there is probably a better than expected chance that the stock slowly movies above book value, and in your view what is an appropriate level at which to raise equity capital understanding that it's been below for a while. We've seen folks some of whom might rush, which can be problematic and some of those might s might take a little bit more patience to their equity capital deployment or equity capital raised plans and trades at a higher premium. How do you look at an equity raise given you are so close to book value and where do you think an appropriate level sits on a price to book basis?

Well, I'll take this one Jim. So John, I'd first say that if we look at our first thesis is our shareholder alignment. So obviously, we got the fee structure that's best in class. But I'd add that we put in place a buyback program and we actually use it. So we think again of we can do the math just like you do in your great reports where even despite the fact that we have great pipeline, deal flow at certain perspective it makes sense to buy back shares and so we did it to show we're aligned and how we're able to do the math ourselves. So now we look at it on the other end from our perspective, I think we look at it two ways. One is the pipeline of opportunity and the quality of deal flow. So that to us is as we look to our sponsor relationships and what's out there, I think that drives us most importantly is wanting to make sure that we continue to work with the next greatest past venture growth stage company and support them. Now with regards to equity capital raise of course, even if we trade at book we're not happy. So we believe our franchise, our platform deserves a meaningful premium to book value and so we're in no rush to raise more capital. The beauty is we have had some prepayments this year which is capital that we can recycle and put to work, and so we're patient. But again, I think as Jim mentioned we see strong market conditions, the opportunity to grow. But we also wanted you to be patient with our investors and know that they'll reward us when we do good things.

Yes. We're running this business for our shareholders and this is the best in class BDC in terms of what we set out here to achieve, so we're going to be consistent with that. And again with record levels of commitments, record levels of investments, a record pipeline here, we want to do what's best for shareholders and we're going to do it the right way and we're not going to do it the wrong way or in a rush and hit the market and our business will determine those kinds of things.

Didn't that also bring up just maybe a few more, so an FDIC and your plans with an FDIC license?

Yes. I'd say despite the track record our BDC trading below NAV, the onus is on us to follow up with the FDIC and the ball is in our court to come back to them. But our thought right now is just to wait, because we are trading above NAV and have some more scale. Our business is not dependent on that right now, our business is keeping up with the high quality, and the pipeline, and the deals at hand and maximizing things for shareholders.

Got it. And then just the final two they're more investment specific. So you know, Virtual Instruments had a bit of a bump in the road, but given who you are and your operating history, I'd imagine that's improved materially. So one, maybe an update on virtual instruments and then only because it's a sizeable one but thinking about KnCMiner on the other side and how you're currently working through that investment and where you would expect it to go only because I've noticed in the queue that there was some risk of expected recoveries of cash from completed asset sales and equity and then you put them there in the foot note. So an update on Virtual Instruments is the success in KnC as you are currently still working through that one.

Yes, no. John I'll take the first one here. So with regard to virtual and I think you may have actually picked they did a press release at the end of the year in terms of yes, some great progress, great momentum in the business post-merger of Virtual. And then they actually did an acquisition to bolt-on some additional pretty cool technology. So from our perspective, I think a testament to our approach of working through credit situations of the company performing now above planned and up to really good things. And so we're very pleased with the progress and the outlook for Virtual. With regards to KnC, no real updates since the end of Q3 in the sense that again the last we left it as the company is really -- the process is controlled by the bankruptcy trustee and so they completed liquidating of certain assets and then negotiated the sale of the remaining assets to a company called GoGreen Light which is in the process of transitioning those assets from KnC to GoGreen Light and we're expecting distributions from the bankruptcy trustee to start late this quarter, early next quarter and so we continue to feel good about a full recovery there. Although we've kept them are marked down below our cost basis just to discount for time and risk, but we feel pretty good. But no material change since Q3 and we expect probably an update here late Q1, early Q2.

Great. Alright, thank you so much for taking my questions.

Thanks.

The next question is from Casey Alexander.

Hi, good afternoon.

Hi, Casey.

John got to a lot of my questions. But let's see if I can come up with a couple more here. Of the eight companies that you funded during the quarter, six were bolt-ons and obviously the [indiscernible] came out actually early in the early part of a call. Can you share with us who the six bolt-ons were with?

I don't have that detail, sorry Casey. Let's see Rent the Runway, WorldRemit, MapR, I'm sorry. It was Xirrus, Rent the Runway, WorldRemit, Fuze, Farfetch, FinancialForce and then CloudStrike was the new investment.

Right. Okay. Am I correct on the GreenChef that's a new company to the portfolio, but it's really just a commitment you haven't actually made the loan is that right?

We received upfront fees and warrants, but they have not drawn yet.

And what's the size of the commitment?

Wait a second $10 million.

Okay. Well, I mean having seen that you've actually had companies that you got paid off without having made a commitment before, we pay attention to that sort of thing. Secondly, you went into a short dissertation on Mine Candy extended the loan there. So could you put a little more color on Mind Candy for us please?

Yes, again we want to be mindful of the company in their capital efforts but as we mentioned. So we are in discussions with them to extend our loan given that the maturity date is currently scheduled for June 30 or July 1 and so as part of in conjunction with them raising more capital and we've agreed to extend the maturity date of our loans and so to give them as they raise more capital and give the company more runway, we've agreed to extend the maturity and the amortization of our debt. But it's an ongoing situation, it hasn't been finalized yet. But we took a mark against it in Q4.

Are they current right now?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay. Next is, I'd like to ask about Harvest Power. It has a strong mark in the [indiscernible]. I was able to get down to that one. But there have been some issues with their situation in Richmond in Canada. Do you have it -- how important is that to the company and sort of how does that affect your view of that credit?

Yes, I think without again going specific into the strategies and kind of circumstances of harvest I think I kind of say high level, the great news is that they are an EBITDA positive company. So strong overall financial, profile plus they have very supportive investors and so from our perspective strong revenue growth, strong overall financial profile again to have a waste management company in the portfolio that's actually EBITDA positive is a great data point. And then they're up to really good things, really strategic things and so we feel pretty good about the outlook for it.

Okay. And lastly from a higher level, more strategic level because Jim was saying you got to know when to swing and you got to know when not to swing. Are there sectors that you are actively avoiding at this point in time or would like to de-emphasize in the portfolio?

You know again, we're a bread and butter technology, lender technology investor, and so no surprise our portfolio is almost all technology and so we're particularly excited about tech, we don't really play in those other sectors. We're more opportunistic when it comes to things like life sciences or other high growth industries to the extent that our select VC's playing them. So I'd say overall we feel tech is particularly strong. There are subsectors of tech that we're very selective of AdTech is something that has gotten a fair amount of push back. There's a fair amount of hype with regards to augmented reality and virtual reality and drones. And so from our perspective, we're being thoughtful of it. But I'd say overall, we continue invest our bread and butter sectors are software, internet, infrastructure, and consumer. And so the VC that we run with those are the sectors that we are particularly excited about, as well FinTech that's another big area for us as well.

Right, right. Okay. I had one more and it just slipped my mind. I'll step out of the queue, if I can think of it, I'll come back in. Thank.

Fair enough.

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

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

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.