Hello, and welcome to SuRo Capital's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Melissa, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this conference is being recorded. And for duration of the call, your lines will be in a listen-only mode. However you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. [Operator Instructions] I'll turn the call over to Jackson Stone. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us on today's call. I'm 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, www.surocap.com, replay information 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, Jackson. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. We would like to share the results of SuRo Capital's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023. In 2023, there was geopolitical conflict, including two ongoing wars, a rapid rise in interest rates and a volatile stock market led higher by a handful of companies. Known as the Magnificent 7, these mega cap stocks drove major market indices to significant gains in 2023. On the other hand, private markets remained weak. According to PitchBook, 2023 venture deal volume declined 30% from 2022 and 51% from 2021. Valuations also declined. Forge's private market index, which tracks the valuations of late-stage venture-backed private companies, closed the fourth quarter down approximately 5% and down for approximately 20% for the year. As we have discussed for several quarters, we feel the valuations of public markets and private markets are converging. We believe the current environment is now delivering the high-quality opportunities we had been awaiting. As such, we executed three investments during the fourth quarter. In 2023 as a whole, we made investments totaling approximately $26 million with over 70% of that capital deployed into secondary opportunities at significant discounts to their last primary valuations. Additionally, subsequent to year-end, we invested $10 million in supplying demands, otherwise known as Liquid Death's primary financing, as I will discuss shortly in my remarks. Turning to our fourth quarter results. We ended the year with a net asset value of $203.4 million or $7.99 per share. This NAV compares to a net asset value of $7.39 a share at year-end 2022. Please turn to Slide 4. Turning to our top five positions. I first want to highlight our cash position. As of year-end, our cash and short-term U.S. treasuries available for investment were approximately $92 million,…

Thank you, Mark. I would like to follow Mark's update with a more detailed review of our fourth quarter and financial results as of December 31, including our investment activity, portfolio company monetization, current liquidity and the status of our share repurchase program and current modified Dutch auction tender offer. First, I will review our investment activity. During the fourth quarter, we invested a total of $4.6 million in new and follow-on investments. These include a $1.6 million investment in the sponsor economics of Colombier Acquisition Corp. II for which we received Class B and Class W units; a $2.7 million follow-on secondary investment in FourKites common shares, bringing our total investment in FourKites in 2023 to $8.5 million and a $325,000 follow-on investment through SuRo Capital Sports and Xpoint's convertible notes. Over the course of the fourth quarter, we sold our remaining public common shares in NewLake Capital Partners and continue to monetize our public common shares in Forge and Nextdoor and warrants in PublicSquare. Notably, we sold 1,465,994 shares of Forge for approximately $5.2 million in net proceeds, resulting in a realized gain of approximately $3.9 million. We also sold 303,963 warrants of PublicSquare for approximately $300,000 in net proceeds, resulting in a realized gain of approximately $200,000. In addition to sales of our unrestricted publicly traded investments, during the fourth quarter, we received a final payment of approximately $300,000 in proceeds from Second Avenue related to principal repayment and interest on the 15% term loan due December 2023. Additionally, we exited our position in Churchill Sponsor VI for a realized loss of approximately $200,000 after it was announced it would not consummate a business combination and we would redeem its outstanding shares of Class A common stock. Finally, during the quarter, we received a distribution of approximately…

[Operator Instructions] And it does not appear we have any questions coming through. I'd like to turn it back over to your host for any closing comments. : :

We at SuRo Capital thank you for spending the time with us this afternoon, and thank you for your ongoing support. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.