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SuRo Capital Corp. 6.00% Notes due 2026 (SSSSL)

Q2 2017 Earnings Call· Tue, Aug 8, 2017

$25.05

+0.10%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to GSV Capital's Second First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. During today's presentation all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be opened for questions. This call is being recorded today, Tuesday, August 8, 2017. I will now like to turn the conference over to Nick Franco, Vice President of GSV Asset Management. Please go ahead sir.

Nicholas Franco

Management

Thank you for joining us on today's call. I'm joined today by GSV Capital Chairman, Michael Moe; and Chief Financial Officer, William Tanona. Please note that a slide presentation that corresponds to today's prepared remarks by management is available on our website at www.gsvcap.com under Investor Relations, Presentations. Today's call is being recorded and broadcast live on our website, gsvcap.com. Replay information is included in our press release issued earlier today. This call is the property of GSV Capital Corporation and the unauthorized reproduction of this call in any form is strictly prohibited. I'd also like to call your attention to customary disclosures in today's earnings press release 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 or future financial condition or results, involve a number of risks, estimates, and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors including, but not limited to those described from time-to-time in the Company's filings with the SEC. Management does not undertake to update such forward-looking statements unless required to do so by law. To obtain copies of GSV Capital's latest SEC filings, please visit our website at gsvcap.com or the SEC's website at sec.gov. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Michael Moe.

Michael Moe

Management

Thank you, Nick. We are pleased to share the results of GSV Capital's second quarter 2017. First I'll review the recent quarter and share an update on our top positions as well as notable developments in the portfolio. Then I'll comment briefly on the market fundamentals that defines GSV Capital's opportunity moving forward, as well as the proactive steps we are taking on shareholder value. I'll then turn the call over to Chief Financial Officer, Bill Tanona, who'll provide a brief financial overview. At the end, we'll open up the call for questions. Let's start with Slides 3 through 5. Net assets totaled approximately $202 million or $9.11 per share as of June 30, 2017 as compared to approximately $196 million or $8.83 per share as of March 31, 2017. Of our five key investment themes, education technology is the large commitment representing 36.7% of the total portfolio at fair value, cloud computing and Big Data is 32.7% of the portfolio, social mobile is 18.8% and marketplace represents 11.2% and sustainability is approximately 1%. As of June 30, 2017 GSV Capital's top 10 positions accounted for approximately 63% of the total portfolio at fair value versus approximately 54% at the same time last year. Our three largest investments; Palantir, Spotify and JAMF Software represented approximately 50% of the total portfolio at fair value. At quarter end there were 38 companies in our portfolio compared with 47 a year ago, this all reflects our continued strategy of consolidating the top, the portfolio around top positions and leading names. So in other words we're going to put more money in fewer companies. In the second quarter the net change in annualized depreciation investments was approximately $12.8 million. Secondary trade as Spotify in the $2,800 range increased GSV's second quarter valuation by $7.4…

William Tanona

Management

Today I have a few very brief comments providing a financial overview for our results, followed by an update on our current liquidity position. We ended the quarter with a net asset value per share of $9.11. A breakdown of the change in NAV during the quarter is shown on Slide 9 that is consistent with our financial reporting. In sum $0.28 per share increased in NAV during the second quarter was driven by $0.58 cents per share of net changes in unrealized appreciation of investment that was partially offset by $0.03 of net realized losses and $0.27 per share of net investment losses or operating expenses. Our liquid assets ended the quarter at approximately $21.8 million consisting of approximately $2.6 million of cash $14.5 million of public securities not subject to lock up agreement and $4.6 million of public security subject to a lock up agreement. Our shares of staff became freely tradable as of July 31 of this year. Subsequent to quarter end, we repaid the $8 million outstanding on our credit facility as of today we have $12 million available for borrowing under the credit facility. Additionally, subsequent to quarter end we sold over 400,000 shares of our unrestricted common stock in portfolio company Chegg for a total proceed of roughly $5.7 million which resulted in a net realized gain of nearly $1 million. We appreciate our stockholders support in GSV Capital. That concludes my comments and we'd like to thank you for your interest. I'll now turn the call over to start the Q&A session. Operator?

Operator

Operator

Our first question is from Ed Woo with Ascendiant Capital.

Edward Woo

Analyst

Yes. Thank you for taking my question. Michael I've definitely, it's been great working with you and I wish you a best luck going forward hoping to stay in touch and Mark I definitely look forward to working with you going forward. Michael, I just have more of a high-level question in terms of what you're seeing out there in Silicon Valley? You guys are in touch with all the big deals that are going on it feels like 27 team seems to be in good share but what are people looking from some of the big teams that are going to be shaping up for the back half of this year and possibly into next year?

Michael Moe

Management

Yes. So one comment is that innovation is alive and well in Silicon Valley. If anything, you see in the pace accelerate start-ups and funding are in a very robust level. And I think, I think to see that continue frankly as much as you're seeing adequate funding in the private marketplace I think you're going to need to see an IPO market that opens up somewhat to see that continue its just a function of how much private - there is a ton of private capital, but the fact of matter is I think you see some realizations you got over 200 unicorns right now. And that's just - on the one hand it's going to be fun when the window opens but the same time I think you will have to see some of that come through, but very excited. So some of the areas that are getting a lot of attention, clearly everybody is all over artificial intelligence and machine learning in every manner kind of applying to every industry there are a lot of things there is another huge, huge megatrend with a lot of interest and a lot of activity going on and just literally we've had a meeting with a fortune 500 company before this call and they are all over start-ups in Silicon Valley and lot of things, because they just believe it's going to be such a transformative wave of technology. Block chain which has got a lot of attention with the digital currencies, I think you're starting to see the - multiple industries and I think that's going to be very exciting, very significant. Digital doctor, there is just a number of interesting things that are going on. I think something there but it's focused on - I do believe it's…

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Cynthia Boyle with Wells Fargo.

Cynthia Boyle

Analyst

Hello, first of all congratulations on the decision to buy back shares. Thank you. We're shareholders obviously and we're all very interested in getting a good return on our money. But I got a simple question, if in fact Spotify takes around of being a direct offering which would mean your shares would be freed up. Can you walk us through what the net impact would be to shareholders? And that there would be no lock out and how it would work internally?

Michael Moe

Management

So there was no lock up, we'll be free to sell the shares immediately that we have. We'll be making decision at that point if the price reflected we've consider it to be properly valued for our shareholders and if it was we'd liquidate the position and a couple of pieces just to put in - One of the things that we've said was that after a company goes public, it would be our intent to sell the shares, I mean it's our intent to sell shares within 12 months after a company lock up is over and that is our intent. I mean that's absolutely our intent, in the case of Spotify, we'll see where it trades. If you've followed the private market there's tremendous demand for Spotify shares today, so we're hopeful that we can continue to see that rise and if it does what we think is fair value it's likely we'd sell the business. Because we will make a major return for our shareholders and that's what we've been doing consistently since we --. But we do reserve the right as we did with Chegg where we held the position longer than that period and the reason was we felt what the shares were trading at versus what we viewed the value was significant, it was 10%, 20% or 30% of gap was literally with the multiples of where the price way. So we made a decision to keep them and we did obviously with the stock performing as it has over the last 12 months, but we do want to make sure that people realise it whether it's our focus or goal that we'll liquidate shares within 12 months. And in terms of distribution, the policy is basically gains offset against losses and then that's the end of year calculation. Bill is there anything to add?

William Tanona

Management

No.

Michael Moe

Management

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Joseph Gardner with Joseph Gardner with Emerald Advisors.

Joseph Gardner

Analyst · Joseph Gardner with Emerald Advisors.

Good afternoon, Mike. Just had a question regarding the portfolio activity for the first 6 months no, no new investments no divestitures just wondering if you can talk a little bit about that and kind of what you're seeing in the marketplace that has led to no activity on either side which is very unusual for GSV given kind of the history there. So if you could just talk a little bit more about that?

Michael Moe

Management

Hi Joe, thank you so much for the question. As it relates to our activity, there is a couple different pieces of it. One is that the liquidity that we have is pretty limited and what we've been focused on is frankly can we get liquidity at a good price for some of our names that we think it's the right thing to do even in the end up in the private well. What we've seen and it's changing by the way, but we saw for most of the first half of the year a private market where it was more of a buyer's market and we did, we were able to see the prices in the portfolio. As reflected in what we've marked the portfolio that we just weren't seeing the kind of prices that we think reflected fair value. So we chose not to sell much of our portfolio and because of our limited liquidity it basically limit our ability to buy new issues. That said, every single Monday we have an active list of companies that we're focused on kind of our NFL draft and we're constantly looking that can we find these shares at attractive price or can we participate in a financing that gets done at attractive price. And just with those opportunity the first six months, I think the market - I think the combination which I referenced before which is you have seen, we've seen a material pick up and just the action of growth names and I think that has sparked 2 things, one we're seeing the activity in the private mark pick up quite a bit, I mean significantly. We are also seeing, while we have seen like this floor of IPOs or the IPO market that's picked up the way we thought it would, I'd be very surprised if we didn't see that come into the fall through the year. History has shown that when the public market starts acting well particularly in the growth names, the IPO market follows and that's what we'd expect and I think again that changes our dynamic given life opportunities relates to take advantage of selling positions that we think reflect our value and buying private companies that we're focused on.

Operator

Operator

Alright. Thank you very much. That does conclude our call for today. We appreciate your joining us.