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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GSV Capital third quarter 2012 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the conference over to Alex Wellins. Please go ahead.
AR
Alex Wellins - Blueshirt Group, Investor Relations
Management
Thank you for calling – joining us on today's call. I'm joined today by Michael Moe, CSV's Founder and CEO, and Steve Bard, the company's Chief Financial Officer. Today's call and webcast are being recorded. An audio replay of the conference call will be available for seven days. This conference call is being webcast on our website at www.gsvcap.com. Replay information is included in our press release that was released before the market opened today. Please note that this call of the properties of GSV Capital Corp. and the unauthorized rebroadcast of this call in any form is strictly prohibited. I'd also like to call your attention to the customary disclosure in our press release today regarding forward-looking information. Statements made in today's conference call and webcast may constitute forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or our future performance or financial condition. These statements are not guarantees of our future performance, condition, or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors including those described from time to time in our filings with the SEC. We do not undertake – update our forward-looking statements unless required to do so by law. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings, please visit our website at GSVcap.com. With that said, I'll turn the call over to Michael Moe. Michael? Michael Moe – Founder, CEO: Thanks, Alex. Good morning. I'm going to start out by saying that our thoughts and our prayers are with those impacted by the terrible hurricane that hit the East Coast last week. I'll note I was supposed to present at the Piper Jaffray conference later today. However, that conference has been cancelled due to the storm. Moving onto…
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, if you have a question, please press the start followed by the one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, press the star followed by the two. If you are using speaker equipment, you will need to lift the handset. We are also asking, when you queue up please ask one question only, and then reenter the queue for any follow-up questions. Our first question comes from the line of Ed Woo – Ascendiant Capital. Please go ahead.
Ed Woo – Ascendiant Capital: Yes, good morning. I have a question in terms of your cash balance. Do you have a targeted cash level that you would like to be at? And when do you think you will be fully invested?
Michael Moe – Founder & Chief Executive Officer: Ed, I may let Steve provide a little bit more detail. The answer is yes we do have a target, and basically we look at kind of [inaudible] dynamic process that we use, but we essentially are making a calculation both of how much we ultimately want to get into a position, how much we might need to be able to have, as cash to put in following where we’ve made primary investments, you know where that’s going to be an expectation that we participate in future financing. How much we think is appropriate just to keep available for opportunities, and so forth. And so, the $42 million, you know – and there was also – while it’s $42 million of cash, we do have public securities where we have some liquidity, which we expect that we will monetize in the relatively near term. So, as we look at that, you know we basically want to make sure that we don’t get down below $20 million with the current size portfolio to date, to make sure that we do have both the flexibility and the cash to participate as we should to remain good partners with some of these companies. And that’s a process that we are going to look at very regularly, also again make a calculation about the liquidity that we’re likely to have either with current positions that are public, or positions that we estimate will be public in the next six months. And then obviously we’ll (rack) with that.
Ed Woo – Ascendiant Capital: Great, thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you, and our next question comes from the line of Mohammad Sheikh – B Finance. Please go ahead. Mohammad Sheikh – B Finance: Good morning Michael, how are you? Michael Moe – Founder & Chief Executive Officer: Great. How are you? Mohammad Sheikh – B Finance: Good, good. Michael, I have a question. Obviously we hear everything you have been doing, and obviously when you read it, it makes a lot of sense. Yet, during the past quarter the stock has repeatedly been making new 52 week lows. At what point do you think the bleeding stops? And one thing which is evident, is an issue when you invest in these companies, and when they do go public they initially do well. But by the time the [inaudible] expires, all [inaudible] case in point, you know, they’re the three you have which you’ve already gone public. Are you able to collar these positions to protect that? Because obviously, you know there [inaudible] public soon. But the question is, is when you actually go sell these things, will the value be higher at that point, and not at the initial IPO? Michael Moe – Founder & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks for the question. First of all, I very much appreciate your involvement. I know you and your team have been very active with the company, which we appreciate your long-term support. Secondly, as it relates to kind of what, you know, the strategy is as a company goes public one, we certainly if provided the opportunity for liquidity we’ll evaluate that at least for a part of the position, just to take some money off the table and to claim some victory. We also think, you know, the key part of creating margin safety for our investments and for the…
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Darnell Elliot, a Private Investor. Please go ahead. Darnell Elliot – Private Investor: Hello, Gentlemen. My name is Darnell. Can you all hear me okay? Michael Moe – Founder, CEO: I can, Darnell. Darnell Elliot – Private Investor: Great. The reason I ask, I’m calling all the way out from Afghanistan. I’m serving overseas. Michael Moe – Founder, CEO: Oh my gosh, well, thank you so much for your service. Darnell Elliot – Private Investor: Thank you. Thank you for the kind words, sir. You know, my typical day, you know, and I’ll try to keep this as short as possible, but my typical day, through the day, I dodge rockets, mortars and recall fragments. I smoke a carton a day. And at the – you know, in the evening, the stock market opens up in the evening, you know, I’m about 11 hours ahead of you over here and at the end of the day, you know, I look into my account, I’m holding 11,000 share of GSVC. I’m all cash, so I don’t have to worry about a more urgent squeeze, but I am worried about if, you know, brokers, for people that are holding the stock on margin, with it trading so low, I’m concerned that people are going to get squeezed out of the stock, that you know, brokers are going to create margin requirements if it continues to make new 52-week lows. Needless to say, I’ve lost $60,000 in the stock, so not only am I getting shot at every day, but every single day it seems I’m losing thousands of dollars every single day every time I, you know, look at the market. I’m not going to, you know, eat your lunch over Facebook, Groupon and…
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Next up is Brett Rice with Janney Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead.
Brett Rice – Janney Montgomery Scott: Good morning, gentlemen.
Michael Moe – Founder, CEO: Good morning.
Brett Rice – Janney Montgomery Scott: You know, in the 1990s, before the Internet burst, there was a company safeguard scientific that would spin off or dividend out some of their winning equity investments to shareholders and the stock had a tremendous run in the mid-1990s. Is GSVC structured in such a way that you could do that type of strategy and is it something you would consider?
SC
Stephen Bard - CFO
Analyst
Brett, thanks for the question. This is Steve Bard.
Brett Rice – Janney Montgomery Scott: Go ahead, Steve.
Stephen Bard – CFO: Yes, we are structured that way as a business development company and the intention is to pay out at least 90% of our realized gains in the form of dividends. So you know…
Brett Rice – Janney Montgomery Scott: But as it relates to the safeguard, Pete Muster is somebody that I’ve got to know well and he’s a person that I admire. He obviously left Safeguard a while ago, but you know we certainly know Safeguard and Pete’s somebody that is one of the jewels of life. You know, that might be a way to narrow the discount from the market price and NAV if you know, a year or two from now the market still doesn’t recognize the good things you’re doing.
Michael Moe – Founder, CEO: We will use every tool available to us to recognize – to create shareholder value and very much appreciate your comment and question. Thank you.
Brett Rice – Janney Montgomery Scott: Great. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. Your final question is a follow-up from Mohammad Sheikh with B Finance. Please go ahead.
Mohammad Sheikh – B Finance: Hi, Michael. One question I had in reference to Violin Memory, I know that’s one we anticipate we do well, you [inaudible] they canceled that agreement with HP, do you see that as a detriment to the stock IPO?
Michael Moe – Founder, CEO: You know, there’s always a lot of, you know, high tech world is always full of deals and deals that get canceled and so forth. And they mysteriously seem to happen a lot when companies are rumored to be going public. We have a high degree of confidence in Violin and the growth that they’re experiencing is extreme, you know, it’s a great company with a great management team and a great product and things will happen. So no, I, you know, it’s not by – it’s not something that was completely unexpected and it doesn’t – I mean, the growth in the pipeline for Violin is something that we’re very encouraged by.
Stephen Bard – CFO: And I’ll just add to Michael’s comments, the press has certainly picked up on the fact that that agreement between Violin and HP is going away, but what does not typically get mentioned is the agreement was for a prior iteration, an earlier generation Violin product, the 3,000 series product and the company’s moving toward the new product, the 6,000 series. So while you never like to see agreements going away between Violin and major OEMs, you know, I think that’s a nuance that didn’t necessarily get picked up in the press and folks should appreciate it.
Mohammad Sheikh – B Finance: Good comment. Thank you.
Michael Moe – Founder, CEO: Thanks, Mohammad.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our conference for today. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.