Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp. Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines have been placed in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' remarks, there will be an opportunity to ask questions and instructions will follow at that time. This conference is being record and a replay of the call will be available in an audio webcast on the TriplePoint Venture Growth website. Company management is pleased to share with you the Company's results for the third quarter of 2022. Today representing the Company is Jim Labe, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board; Sajal Srivastava, President and Chief Investment Officer; and Chris Mathieu, Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the call over to Mr. Labe, I'd like to direct your attention to the customary Safe-Harbor disclosure in the Company's press release regarding forward-looking statements and remind you that during this call management will make certain statements that relate to the future events or the Company's future performance or financial condition, which are considered forward-looking statements under Federal Securities Law. You are asked to refer to the Company's most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements or projections unless required by law. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements made during the call, which reflect management's opinions only as of today. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings, please visit the Company's website at www.tpvg.com. And at this point, I'd now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Labe. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining TPVGs third quarter earnings call. During the quarter, we further capitalize on the strong demand for our financing while continuing to grow the portfolio in a disciplined manner. We're pleased to have efficiently invested the capital from our recent accretive $55 million equity offering. This helped us grow our portfolio to a record fair value of almost a billion generate net investment income or NII of $0.51 per share and achieve a weighted average portfolio yield of 13.8%. For the third quarter, our NII again exceeded our quarterly distribution. And we're proud to announce that our Board made the decision to increase the regular quarterly distribution to $0.37 per share. Given our sizable portfolio, coupled with favorable fixed rate financing and increasing portfolio yields, we believe we remain in a strong position to both generate NII that covers our new $0.37 per share dividend. And to further increase yield to return to shareholders over time, as we've done the day. Since going public more than eight years ago, we have now declared $12.60 per share in regular quarterly distributions. And in addition, three special dividends for total distributions to shareholders of $12.95 per share. Notably, our NII has exceeded our distributions on a cumulative basis during this time, while also maintaining sizeable spillover income. Turning to yield, we have now grown our core portfolio yield to over six pass quarters, and expect the positive trends and opportunities to continue. In seeking to capitalize on the opportunities in the market, we will continue to focus on investing in what we believe are the most attractive venture growth stage companies with the strongest prospects and a focus on quality. We believe there will be increasing opportunities in the many months ahead, especially given favorable…

Thank you, Jim and good afternoon. Q3 was a strong quarter where we not only grew and diversified the portfolio, but we also demonstrated both the earnings power of the business and our alignment with shareholders. With regards to investment portfolio activity during Q3, TriplePoint Capital signed 269 million of term sheets with venture growth stage companies, and we closed $103 million of debt commitments to 10 companies at TPVG. Signed term sheets and closed commitments during Q3 reflected not only the seasonality of the third quarter, but also our continued discipline as we seek to capitalize on the exceptional demand in the market. While selecting only the highest quality opportunities given we expect demand to remain strong and continue to grow throughout 2023. In fact, other 10 companies we committed debt capital to during the quarter, seven were new portfolio companies and three were existing portfolio. We also received warrants valued at $1.9 million in 16 portfolio companies and made $2.6 million of direct equity investments in six companies. During the third quarter, we funded $101.7 million in debt investments to 14 portfolio companies. In line with our guided range for Q3. These debt investments carried a weighted average annualized portfolio yield of 14.5% and origination up from 13.6% in Q2 ‘22. Our core portfolio yield, which again is yield without the impact of prepayments was 13.8% during the quarter, up 100 basis points from last quarter and represented the sixth consecutive quarterly increase. Regarding prepayments, we had one small prepayment in the quarter that didn't materially contribute to portfolio yield. We'd like to also point out that our Q3 portfolio yield does not yet fully reflect the 75 basis point increase announced on September 20, which will more meaningfully impact portfolio yield starting in Q4. For Q4, we…

Great. Thank you, Sajal. And hello everybody. During the third quarter, we continue to experience growing core interest income from our loan portfolio, and once again saw efficient and stable utilization rates on new debt commitments. We deployed capital using our attractive sources of leverage, which consisted of our fixed rate, long-term investment grade notes, and a revolving credit facility. And resulting in an increased diversification within the portfolio. We successfully completed an overnight common stock equity offering and put in place our first at the market equity purchase program. I'd like to take you through our detailed financial results for the third quarter. Total investment income was $29.7 million with a portfolio yield of 13.8%, on total debt investments for the third quarter, as compared to $21.2 million and 12.3% for the prior year period. Total investment income reflects a higher average debt investment balance, as well as increased yields. So far this year, we have seen prime rate increase from 3.25% to 6.25% as of September quarter end. And further given the news today from the Federal Reserve, we expect to see revenue expansion from higher yields on our existing floating rate loan portfolio. Operating expenses were $12.8 million, as compared to $11.3 million for the third quarter of 2021. Operating expenses for the quarter consisted of $7 million of interest expense, $3.9 million of management fees, $100,000 of incentive fees, and $1.6 million of G&A expenses. The increase in overall operating expenses primarily driven by an increase in the use of attractive leverage as we increase total portfolio assets, while offset by lower incentive fees. We have net investment income of $16.9 million or $0.51 per share, compared to just $9.9 million or $0.32 per share in the same period in 2021. During the third quarter, the…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Finian O'Shea of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. First, sort of a high level market question. Jim. I was interested in some of your earlier comments on how robust the venture capital fundraising environment continues to be seemingly in the face of the private markets or alternative asset markets broadly, in a very challenged environment. How do you think that is holding up so well? And do you think it is sustainable?

Look well, it's hard to predict the future in terms of sustainability. But certainly it it's been something over a number of years. And I attribute it to the attractiveness of the asset class in the long term. These are 10 year funds that are raising and typically, returns have been pretty attractive with the select group of venture investors and hasn't been an exact function of macro-economic cycles. So at least for the better VCs and the 6% that I mentioned that we're able to raise its track record in the long term outlook and the valuations and three and five and seven years as the targets not next quarter. Kind of thing.

Helpful, thank you. And just a follow up on the dividend. I know I have to calibrate my words here a bit because it seems like the Fed may have just pushed the dot plot up further. But I wanted to ask, what if the if the base rates go back down? Are you comfortable with earning $0.37, it's looks like 11.5% to 12% of NAV ROE?

Yes, Fin. This is Sajal. I'll take it. So I think you bring up a very great point of, listen, I think when it comes to the dividend, we're always mindful of not just current short term market conditions, but longer term outlook. And so I would say the factors that give us confidence with regards to our ability to cover and potentially more is, is the fact that we look at the core asset yields without the benefit of prepayment activity being particularly strong. And then, setting our floors or primary floors, on new transactions at the current prime rate. So protecting ourselves in an environment where rates, base rates would come down. I think the second element of it is, locking in low cost, fixed rate debt was also another benefit to us and to give us confidence in terms of coverage. And then I'd say the third piece is, running at maintaining target leverage. And so I think that's from our perspective, something of most important that but we have the least control over. But I think we're pleased to although we had only a small prepay in Q3, obviously, they have three already in Q4, those generate nice gains, as we mentioned, in the quarter, they occur, but they also deliver the business. And so for us, continuing to have line of sight on fundings is important as we look to long-term dividend distribution coverage.

Great, thanks so much.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Paul Johnson, of KBW. Please go ahead.

Yes, good evening, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. As far as where companies have raised equity, more recently through this summer or the middle of the year? I'm just curious how those conversations have gone. I mean, have you noticed any change, I guess, in the source of where those raises are coming from, any sort of commentary, I guess, on support for companies from, your sponsors. I'm just curious, where, again, where the -- where companies have raised equity, what has kind of been the nature of those fundraising events?

Yes, given -- I'll take a first stab, given some of the uncertainties out there in the market. There has been some, a lot of attention being paid to valuations or some resetting and probably I would call it a little bit more return to reasonableness is, as part of it, and what in large part is happening is, at least with most of our deals, and our select investors who say they continue to remain supportive and demonstrate their support. Some around sizes tend to be a little bit more convertibles, capital to support the dead. Some of the round sizes a little smaller, but definitely those investors support on a go forward basis.

Yes, I would -- Sajal here. I would only add that we're, I think one of the benefits of partnering up with such top tier VCs is seeing continued strong support from them and other existing investors. And so I think that shows commitment to the existing portfolio companies. As Jim mentioned, there is a fair amount of dry powder, I would sort of feels like a lot of the new money is sitting on the sidelines right now waiting for early next year, which is kind of consistent what we're expecting with continued demand growing next year as new money kind of comes back to market early next year, while existing investors are really leaning into supporting their existing portfolio companies here in ‘22.

Great, thanks. Appreciate that. Those are the helpful answer there. I guess, on your -- just talking about your leverage capacity and your target leverage for the BEC a little bit. I'm just curious. So your kind of, I guess, more or less your range 1.0 1.2 times or so. How comfortable are you I guess running it up towards the upper end of that? Do you have any level in your mind I guess where there would be kind of a hard stop at where you would be kind of a hard stop at where you would probably prefer to limit, I guess, leverage growth within the BDC? I guess I'm taking all this into account to what your comments were, as far as, seeing a fairly active market, more attractive deals in the market? Obviously, a lot of fundraising out there as well.

Yes, I'll start and then Chris, jump in. So again, I just clarify, Paul, are, our target range is one to 1.3. And so, I would say that we're comfortable going up a little bit higher, and I think we have in prior quarters, and then based on the sustainability of it again, the good news is our portfolio is amortizing our portfolio companies prepay us repay us. I mean, you could -- we already have visibility on this, we already have $34 million back here in Q4 and then another $30 million with visibility when ForgeRock, closes, it's take private. So that's part of the balance of -- I think one of the great aspects of our portfolio is that they do prepay, they do repay us. So that allows us to have peak periods where we may be at the higher end or exceed our higher end, but we're not yet ready to pull the trigger on a public offering. Because of that visibility on liquidity. I also think that the ATM again also helps complementing, maintaining leverage and not getting over our ski tips on the higher end of it. So I think the takeaway is we have lots of levers to maintain healthy leverage, both at the base level with our fixed rate debt and then at the higher level with prepays and repays. But I think, to the other point of yes, ensuring we have, our thesis right now is the deals are just getting better, every quarter. So, we're in no rush necessarily to deploy our capital here in Q4, our core thesis without revealing too much of our strategy to our competitors is, listen, there's the benefit of being patient and disciplined, because just as we see some of that equity capital coming off the sidelines next year, that's when we really want to lean in. And so as we see that, that growth, and so I'd say, preserving firepower for next year in anticipation of that is important for us.

Got it. Appreciate it Sajal. Thank you for that. Last question just on Medly Health, obviously, because of the dimension of negative events post quarter, and I haven't seen where it was marked for this quarter if it potentially reflected any of that, or if it's been marked down 2Q. But I was wondering if you could potentially provide any other details on the company, size of the company, nature of the -- just decline in the performance if it was something more exogenous to the company or if it was during internally with management change, you mentioned? Any, information that would be helpful.

Yes, I'll start. So I'd say this was a company, we did downgrade in Q3 for the criteria that I mentioned in terms of kind of the business pivot and focus, that changing team and kind of liquidity, and so 30, roughly 30 million loan position that we have marked down here in Q3, the developments that we mentioned today, this is something we just recently learned. So, our team is actively monitoring this situation. And so given that we're just only recently made aware of this information, we're actively monitoring it for any further developments, but I would say that, it's still in development.

Got it. Appreciate. Those are all my questions. Thanks for having me.

Our next question comes from Christopher Nolan of Ladenburg Thalmann, please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Sajal when you mentioned the leverage target one to 1.3. It's a thinking to keep it -- keep leverage on the low side, just because of the unpredictability of the directions economy.

I think the keeping it on the lower end is really for the anticipated kind of continued growth in demand. So I'd say -- I would say it's more of a focus of having that dry powder. I think the other practical element too, is again, given the prepays and repays are already locked in both from portfolio amortization, maturity dates, and again, the prepayment activity were naturally delevering a bit each quarter. So I'd say it's more of being disciplined, Chris and timing when we go back in a meaningful way into take advantage of market conditions, but we want to make sure it's timed appropriately with the kind of strong equity conviction.

Great, and I guess my only follow up would be sort of a general question. Would you consider I mean [indiscernible] I think a major real estate investment with the guy did we work. And if real estate commercial real estate turns out to be a place for entrepreneurs like that it's not an area that you would go in, or it's such a sort of outside your reservation. That's it for me. Thank you.

Yes, I would just say, again, our model is to work with some of the brightest and best venture capital funds. And so to the extent that they're excited and deploying capital in promising sectors, we want to be thoughtful and mindful and obviously do our own sanity check as well. And so I can't necessarily comment directly on real estate per se, but I would say, fundamentally our model is to, to go in those sectors that are attracting equity capital investment from premier venture capital sponsors that we think are sustainable for the long term.

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes our question and answer session. I'll now turn the conference back over to Mr. James Labe, for any closing remarks. Please, go ahead.

Thanks. As always like to thank everyone for listening and participating in today's call. We look forward to talking with you all again next quarter. And thanks again. Have a nice day. Goodbye.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.