Good morning. My name is David, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Trinity Capital's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Ben Malcolmson, Head of Investor Relations for Trinity Capital.

Thank you, and welcome to Trinity Capital's earnings conference call for the full year and fourth quarter of 2024. Today, our speakers are Kyle Brown, Chief Executive Officer, Michael Testa, Chief Financial Officer, and Gerry Harder, Chief Operating Officer. Also joining us for the Q&A portion of the call is Ron Kundich, Chief Credit Officer. Trinity's financial results were released earlier today and can be accessed on our Investor Relations website at ir.trinitycap.com. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this call may be deemed forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. Because forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, we encourage you to refer to our most recent SEC filings for information on certain risk factors. Trinity Capital assumes no obligation or responsibility to update any forward statements. Now please allow me to turn the call over to Trinity Capital's CEO, Kyle Brown.

Thank you, Ben, and thanks everyone for joining us today. 2024 was an excellent year for Trinity Capital as our strategies continue to perform well and we achieved record results. Major milestones from 2024 include $116 million of net investment income or $2.20 per share, a record $1.2 billion of fundings, the launch of our sponsor finance and asset-backed lending verticals, giving us five complementary yet diverse business verticals, the expansion of Trinity's lending platform into Europe with the establishment of a London-based team, and the official launch of our RIA's first co-investment vehicle, which further capitalizes the business and provides incremental income to our BDC shareholders. We finished the year with an especially strong fourth quarter. Here are some highlights from Q4. We delivered a net investment income of $35 million, a 38% increase versus Q4 of last year. Net asset value grew to $823 million, up 9% from $757 million in the prior quarter. Platform AUM reached a record by exceeding $2 billion. Trinity paid a fourth-quarter cash dividend of $0.51 per share, representing our twentieth consecutive quarter of a consistent and growing dividend. During the fourth quarter, our five business verticals continued to perform well, fueling growth and profitability. As a reminder, we have grown into a direct lending platform comprised of five business verticals: tech lending, equipment financing, life sciences, asset-backed lending, and sponsor finance focused on private equity-backed businesses. These verticals each have their own experienced team that leads the originations, credit, and portfolio management functions, which gives them the ability to scale efficiently. Our investments in these strategic growth initiatives have generated extraordinary momentum, highlighting our commitment to expanding the platform and broadening our investment opportunities. Trinity Capital's first alternative asset management company, in addition to a direct lender, seeks efficiencies by scaling our…

Thank you, Kyle. In the fourth quarter, we achieved record total investment income of $71 million, a 48% increase over the same period in 2023. Our effective yield on the portfolio for Q4 was once again an industry-leading 16.4%, and our core yield, which excludes fee income, remains strong at 14.7% despite industry-wide yield compression. Net investment income for the fourth quarter was $35 million or $0.58 per basic share compared to $25 million or $0.57 per basic share in the same period of the prior year. This quarter's earnings experienced the benefit of increased fee income from higher early portfolio payoffs and fundings within our equipment financing vertical. Our net investment income per share represents 114% coverage of our quarterly distribution. Our estimated undistributed taxable income is approximately $67 million or $1.08 per share. We continue to reinvest this capital for the benefit of our investors while maintaining a consistent and meaningful distribution. Our platform continues to generate strong returns for our BDC shareholders, with ROE of 17.4% based on net investment income over average equity and ROAA of 7.6% based on net investment income over average total assets. As of December 31, 2024, our NAV was $823 million, up from $757 million as of September 30, 2024. Our corresponding NAV per share was $13.35 at the end of Q4, an increase from $13.13 as of September 30, 2024. The increase in net assets per share was primarily due to the portfolio activity, accretive ATM offerings, and net investment income exceeding the declared dividend. During the fourth quarter, we realized net gains of approximately $9.3 million, primarily from the sale of two equity and warrant positions. As a reminder, we receive warrants on a majority of our loans, especially in the tech lending and life science verticals. During the…

Thank you, Michael. Since our last earnings call, Trinity has continued to focus on executing our strategies across our five business verticals, which strengthen and diversify our platform while enhancing our ability to offer customized financing solutions to our evolving client base of growth-oriented companies. We remain dedicated to supporting companies at every stage of their growth cycle. At the end of the fourth quarter, on a cost basis, our total portfolio consisted of approximately 75% secured loans, 18% equipment financings, 5% equity, and 2% warrants. The composition of our portfolio remained consistent with prior quarters, with diversification across investment type, transaction size, industry, and geography. Our portfolio is segmented across 21 industry categories, with our largest industry exposure, finance and insurance, representing 18.1% of the portfolio at cost. This exposure is spread across 15 borrowers and includes both term loans and asset-backed warehouse facilities. Our next largest industry concentrations are medical devices and green technology, representing 9.7% and 8.3% of the portfolio at cost, respectively. In aggregate, life sciences-related industries collectively made up 25.5% of our total portfolio on a cost basis. Among our five business verticals, the approximate breakdown of our fundings in Q4 went as follows: 33% to equipment financing, 28% to sponsor finance, 27% to tech lending, 7% to life sciences, and 3% to asset-backed lending. As of the end of Q4, our largest portfolio company debt represents 3.1% of our debt portfolio and 2.9% of our total portfolio on a cost basis. Our ten largest debt investments collectively represent 23.3% of our total portfolio on a cost basis. Now turning our focus to credit. The credit quality of our portfolio improved quarter over quarter, with approximately 99.2% of our portfolio performing on a fair value basis. Our average internal credit rating for the fourth quarter…

We will take our first question from Casey Alexander from Compass Point. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Actually, Mike, my question was answered, so I am fine. Thank you.

Thanks, Casey.

We will take our next question then from Matthew Hurwit with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Everyone, congrats on the results. I hope you are well. My first question is just on how you have maintained low nonaccruals. Can you share with us what practices or borrower characteristics are helping keep nonaccruals so low, and are there any early warning signs as we head into 2025 in terms of credit deterioration or anything you are watching? Thanks.

Sorry, Matthew. This is Ron, Chief Credit Officer, Ron Kundich. Good to talk to you today. Yeah. We have shared with TheStreet on a quarterly basis discussion around our underwriting rigor and more importantly, our five vertical strategy. Within each vertical, we do not just have underwriters, but we have underwriters that are experts within that vertical. We have portfolio managers that have experience within that vertical, and so forth. So as you might imagine, each vertical is different. Equipment lending is different than, you know, venture debt in the life science space, for example. So it is really important for us to have that expertise within each vertical, and we believe that that structure with the rigor that we bring at the front end of the pipeline has led to, you know, the results we have shown on credit quality.

Great. Thank you. And then on leverage, how are you approaching leverage in the current environment? Is your goal to maintain it around the current level, or do you see room to increase leverage for growth, or just how are your thoughts on leverage currently?

So we have messaged this in the past, and this is how we think about it. We really do want to continue over time to decrease leverage. Our ability to raise money off balance sheet and create new liquidity gives us the ability to downstream some of those assets into managed accounts and keep a really healthy level of leverage around kind of one to one. We will ramp it up sometimes, but it makes sense too because we have, you know, more deals to fund, more opportunities. But then the idea is to make sure that we, you know, downstream those assets into managed accounts and take that leverage back down. So over time, as we build out the RIA and build out earnings there, you know, we will see and have the ability to have less leverage at the BDC level, which will create, of course, more liquidity for us to be opportunistic along the way. So that is how we think about it. We, you know, intend over time to continue to decrease that as the RIA generates new earnings, and we can decrease it while also increasing earnings per share.

Great. Thanks very much, and congrats on the results.

Thank you, Matthew.

We will take our next question from Doug Harter with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks. Somewhat piggybacking off the last question, how do you think about kind of the appetite to continue to raise capital off of the ATM, and, you know, kind of, how do you see the pace of deployment in the, you know, to in order to maintain leverage, you know, kind of at that one times target you just mentioned, Kyle?

Sure. We, you know, we think of the ATM as just-in-time financing. It is less expensive. It is really the most efficient way to raise equity. But, you know, when we think about raising equity or debt at the BDC level, you know, we are doing it in a way and we have historically done it in a way that is accretive to investors. And so what we have with the RIA is the ability and liquidity there now to where, you know, we will, as we build deployment, we will build those managed accounts and to the extent, you know, we need additional capital, you know, we will tap into the ATM as needed. But not in a way that will be dilutive to shareholders, and that is how we think about it. So Mike, you want to add anything to that?

Yeah, Doug. I would say that, again, we are being thoughtful, trying to diversify our capital sources just like we are diversifying the asset side of our balance sheet. So we are looking, you know, we launched a debt ATM subsequent to quarter-end. You know, have more flexibility with raising just-in-time debt capital. We had a no-roll private placement issuance, debt issuance. So looking beyond institutional retail, beyond just the balance sheet, but also, you know, in through the RIA and private vehicles through the RIA. All different channels providing additional flexibility as we grow and scale, more opportunities will open up to us.

Great. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks.

And once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We will take our next question from Paul Johnson with KBW. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. On the bond conversion next quarter, it sounds like you guys are settling that via cash, so there will not be any dilutive impact. But is there any way to quantify the retirement expense for that for next quarter?

Yeah. In my prepared remarks, I noted an estimate of $0.27 per share on NAV impact as a result of that, the conversion rate in current where it is at $66 million of course to extinguish that debt.

Got it. Thanks for that. I missed that detail. Thanks for that. Switching over to the portfolio. I am just curious, you know, in terms of the FinTech exposure in the portfolio. How many of the companies would you say are dependent on bank partnerships for business?

Yeah. I do not know. This is Gerry. That is a great question. It is not uncommon for, you know, some of those business models to require such partnerships. So, you know, but in our underwriting, we are thinking that through, right, and making sure that there are multiple banks in those partnerships. Right? And so, you know, much like we would not underwrite a life sciences company with, you know, one shot on goal from a drug approval standpoint. Similarly, you know, we are deeply considering that in the underwriting if there are bank partnerships, there have to be multiple on board, you know, with additional in queue. So it is a great question and something we talk about as we underwrite, but we limit our exposure.

Yeah. Hey. This is Kyle. I will add something else. We are, you know, our ABL group that does warehouse loans is, you know, primarily focused on fintech. And we are really in many of those cases, when we are senior, we are the replacement for the bank. So we are providing that advance against receivables there. And then for more mature companies, we are partnering with a bank. So a lot of the fintech exposure that we have and a lot of it that we will have going forward is really more asset-backed lending where we are doing receivable type financing at a nice, you know, loan to value or loan to cost against those receivables. So we like that. We like that position with fintech companies.

Got it. Appreciate it. That is helpful. Details there. And then, you know, on just one investment, one of the nonaccruals this quarter, I just wanted to ask, you know, I know it is a small loan, looks like a, you know, small tranche of space perspective was placed on nonaccrual this quarter. But I just wondering, I mean, just because that is such a novel industry, I mean, again, understanding that the one small loan, I mean, is there anything to read into that in terms of trends within that industry, or is more of an idiosyncratic issue related to a space perspective?

Yeah. This is Ron Kundich, Chief Credit Officer. I think it is company-specific, Paul. I do not think there is anything industry-wide that we are concerned with. This is a company, as you alluded to, was a small, you know, venture debt term loan situation. The bulk, I should not say the bulk, a large part of our space portfolio is related to our equipment finance vertical. As you know, in the equipment finance vertical, we are lending against new equipment, specific equipment. We have an asset that is tangible that we can liquidate if we needed to in a distressed situation. So when you think about us and you think about space, keep that in mind. Again, space perspective, our loan to them did not fall into that category. It was, as you alluded to, a small loan venture term debt. The company is still attempting to raise some capital, so we are monitoring it closely.

Appreciate it. That is all for me. Thank you.

Thanks, Paul.

We will take our next question from Christopher Nolan with Ladenburg Thalmann. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. What are you targeting for the comp EPS contribution from these outside RIA entities in 2025?

Hey, Chris. It is Mike. As we go through our AOA inner model for 2025, you would see immediately we have had expense allocations reimbursement for expenses get pushed down to the RIA. We have not given any forward-looking information on any dividends, but we do anticipate 2025, as well as expense allocation, you will see dividends coming back up from the RIA from those fees and income managed under the RIA.

Yeah. It is going to be a big part of our future. You know, I would say we have two accounts we are managing. We are working on others. You know, regulators do not move as fast as we do. And so we are kind of poised and ready to execute and, you know, we are looking at this year as more of execution of the RIA and then really start building.

Gotcha. Second question. The Trump administration is making Make America Healthy Again a focus. How does everything happening in that space affect your life science exposure?

We think about that. We obviously think about that. You know, and we do not see any immediate impact. We do not do a ton of bio or pharma. It is just not what we focus on primarily. So we are focused on primarily med device companies that scale post-FDA approved products. I mean, that is primarily where we focus. And so far, we just do not see a lot of exposure there.

Great. Final question. On the debt ATM, would this be for unsecured notes?

That is right, Chris. We have two debt issuances from Trinity at TRINI and TRINZ that are eligible for that ATM program.

Okay. And so the general idea would be to utilize the facility less, but the ATM is sort of an alternative to the facility. Right?

Yeah. I mean, we are going to look at all options, you know, based on what makes financial sense. And, you know, the ATM program for the debt is the same as the equity. It is efficient. You can raise it over time. It is at the prevailing price of the debt at the time, so prevailing all-in yield. We will measure that against, you know, all other market activities or secured debt that we have.

Okay. That is it for me. Thanks, guys. Good quarter.

Thanks, Chris.

And there are no further questions on the line at this time. I will now turn the call back to the CEO, Kyle Brown, for any closing remarks.

Well, we would like to thank everybody for participating in our call today. Appreciate your interest and investment in Trinity Capital. We look forward to updating you on Q1 results during our next earnings call on May 7th. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks.

This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.