Ted Goldthorpe
Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us for our earnings call. Today, Portman Ridge announced its fourth quarter 2019 and 2019 fiscal year financial results.2019 was a very active year for Portman Ridge. In April, we closed the Externalization transaction for KCAP. In mid-December, we received shareholder approval and completed the merger with OHA Investment Corporation. And at the end of December, we successfully completed the refinancing of our revolving credit facility, reducing borrowing costs and increasing our investment capacity for our business going forward.We remain very-excited about the integration and transformation of the OHA merger. Prior to the end of the year, we monetized close to 40% of the legacy OHA Investments at around NAV and have already reinvested or identified reinvestment for the bulk of those proceeds. We will continue to opportunistically rotate out of those assets as reinvestment opportunities arise. We anticipate that the incremental NII generated from OHA portfolio to pay back the transaction costs in approximately three quarters, which equates to an approximate 120% annual yield on the investment.As required with the merger, Portman announced the stock buyback program to repurchase up to $10 million of stock over the next year through open market purchases. And we’ll look to opportunistically purchase shares subject to blackout periods, available cash and restrictions in our existing bond indenture.Transitioning to the state of the markets. Right now, the liquid credit markets are experiencing the most volatility that we’ve seen since the energy downturn in 2015 and 2016, and even -- and more so even than in December 2018 as a result of the COVID-19 headlines. Although it is too early to see an impact in our underlying portfolio companies, we’re monitoring the situation closely and are in contact with companies that we perceive to have some amount of exposure. Generally, we have a negligible exposure to the most likely to be impacted sectors such as auto, energy, leisure, hospitality, travel and airlines.As it relates to our primary market, directly originating middle market loans, we have not seen the volatility or recent rate cuts trickle down to widening spreads, but the deal activity is picked up given the need for certainty. However, if volatility continues and the impacts of COVID-19 become more apparent, we would anticipate widening spreads as a response. We are very cautious on underwriting of the new loans, given the uncertain impact of the coronavirus, both on the economy and micro factors, namely supply chains, raw material pricing and availability and end-market demand.With that, I’ll turn the call over to Ted Gilpin, our CFO, for a brief overview of the financial results of the quarter; and then, Patrick Schafer, our Chief Investment Officer, for a review of our investment activity before concluding the call with some additional remarks.