Good day. And welcome to the SuRo Capital First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. I will now hand you over to Willy Lee to begin today’s conference. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us on today’s call. I am joined today by the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SuRo Capital, Mark Klein; and Chief Financial Officer, Allison Green. Please note that a slide presentation corresponding to today’s prepared remarks by management is available on our website at www.surocap.com under Investor Relations, Events & Presentations. Today’s call is being recorded and broadcast live on our website at www.surocap.com. Replay information is included in our press release issued today. This call is the property of SuRo Capital and the unauthorized reproduction of this call in any form is strictly prohibited. I would 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 and involve a number of risks, estimates, and uncertainties, including the impact of any market volatility that may be detrimental to our business, our portfolio companies, our industry, and the global economy that could cause actual results to differ materially from the plans, intentions, and expectations reflected in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. 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 SuRo Capital’s latest SEC filings, please visit our website at www.surocap.com or the SEC’s website at sec.gov. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mark Klein.

Thank you, Willy. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. We would like to share the results of SuRo Capital’s first quarter 2023. The first quarter of 2023 saw a continued utility in the public equity markets as a result of continued inflation coupled with decelerating GT and extended stress in the banking sector. Recently, however, the NASDAQ Composite Index and the technology stocks, in particular, appear to have shown signs of stabilization. Despite the volatility, the IPO markets have shown cautious signs of near term opening. For example, last week, Johnson & Johnson’s consumer health spinoff, Kenvue, debuted in the public markets raising $3.8 billion. According to Bloomberg, this was just U.S. listings since 2021. Additionally, according to the information in the wake of its failed SPAC merger, leading online ticket platform SeatGeek filed confidentially for an IPO last month. Further, according to the Wall Street Journal, marketing automation company, Klaviyo, hired bankers in April for an upcoming IPO with sources saying the listing could take place as early as September. Finally, according to Bloomberg, British computing firm, Arm, filed for a U.S. IPO with plans to raise between $8 billion and $10 billion. They listed Arm, one of the largest U.S. IPOs of the last decade. These listings and headlines demonstrate cautious optimism for a rebound in the latter half of 2023. We are also seeing positive trends emerge in the private secondary markets. And its April, 2023, Private Markets Update Forge reported that the median bid ask spread on new indications of interest compressed in March down from the platform’s all-time high in Q3 of 2022. Consistent with prior quarters, Forge has also reported that in the first quarter, secondary transactions were closed at an approximately 50% discount to companies last primary financing. While still relatively…

Thank you, Mark. I would like to follow Mark's update with a more detailed review of our first quarter investment activity and financial results as of March 31st, including the results of our Modified Dutch Auction Tender Offer executed subsequent to quarter end and our current liquidity position. First, I will review our investment activity not including investments in short-term U.S. treasuries. During the first quarter, we made a $2 million follow on investment in the Series 1 Senior Preferred Shares of Orchard Technologies, Inc. Additionally, the remaining $1.3 million unfunded commitment to True Global Ventures 4 Plus was funded via net distribution capital call. Over the course of the first quarter, we sold our remaining public common shares of Rent The Runway and Kahoot! and continued to monetize our public common shares in NewLake Capital Partners. In addition to sales of our unrestricted publicly traded investments during the first quarter we received approximately $300,000 in proceeds from Second Avenue related to principle repayments on the 15% term-loan due December 2023, as well as other investment dividend and interest income. Subsequent to quarter end, we continued to receive proceeds from Second Avenue related to principle repayment and interest on the 15% term-loan due December 2023, as well as other investment dividends and interest income. Please turn to Slide 5. Segmented by six general investment themes, the top allocation of our investment portfolio at quarter end was the education technology representing approximately 38% of the investment portfolio at fair value. Financial technology and services was the second largest category representing approximately 30% of the portfolio. The marketplaces category accounted for approximately 15% of our investment portfolio and approximately 9% of our portfolio was invested in cloud and big data companies. Social and mobile accounted for approximately 8% of the fair value…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We have our first question from Kevin Fultz from JMP Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi thanks for taking my questions. My first question relates to Learneo. You've seen the headlines around the impact that AI and ChatGPT is having in the online education space. Some publicly traded education platforms are down more than 60% year-to-date. Mark, I was curious if you could share your thoughts on the impact that AI is having on Learneo's business model if they're experiencing the same degree of disruption that other education platforms are facing. I'm just trying to get a better understanding around how you're evaluating your investment and what the outlook is for the company? Thanks.

Thanks Kevin. Appreciate it. And as you can tell, we focus a lot of our prepared remarks around Learneo to address that that issue head on. So what I would say is that Learneo's management has been at the forefront of understanding the need to diversify their business model and they raised a bunch of money in the end of December of 2021 to do that. As we discussed in the prepare remarks several of their investments are with AI-based tools as part of them and have experienced significant growth of their business. They do have the Course Hero based business, which is similar to Chegg and they have been discussing how to utilize AI in connection with all of their tools in Course Hero to address that will be successful with it as well.

Okay. I appreciate the comments and I'll leave it there.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have our second question from Jon Hickman from Ladenburg Thalmann. Please go ahead.

Hi. So you made the comment, Mark, that you'd looked at or reviewed more opportunities in this months than in any other period, is that what you said?

Yes. Well it's about five months, but sure.

Okay, five months?

Yes. So Jon it's – there is an awful lot that is going on specifically in the secondary markets as early investors or employees or ex-employees are looking to monetize their holdings because they don't know when the IPO market is opening. So we are getting a lot of opportunities in that area. We are seeing some smaller primary rounds that are being done as well, and as we said also in our prepared remarks although we are seeing a lot, there still is a bit of a dislocation between where the public company comparable companies are trading versus where the secondary prices of these private companies are. But we are looking at a lot, we are evaluating a lot and we continue to move forward on that.

So are these organized secondarys like – like the companies or they've hired like bankers or whatever?

No. For the large part, no. Some are organized secondaries, some are company tender offers, some are sourced either through our network or through brokers or through exchanges.

Okay.

There are no further questions. So I will hand the call over to Mr. Mark Klein to conclude today's conference.

Thank you all very much for taking the time this afternoon to participate in our earnings call. As always we management are available to have further conversations. Thank you.