SuRo Capital Corp (SSSS) 2014 Q2 法說會逐字稿

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  • Operator

  • Ladies and gentlemen you're currently holding for GSV Capital Second Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. At this time we're submitting additional participants and going to be underway shortly. Thank you for your patience, we'll be underway in just a moment.

  • Please standby, we're about to begin.

  • Good day ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GSV Capital Second Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. During today's presentation, all parties will be on listen only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions. At that time, you may press star-1 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue.

  • We ask that you please limit yourself to one questions and one follow-up. This conference is being recorded today, Thursday August 7, 2014. I would now like to turn the conference over to Spencer McLeod of GSV Capital. Please go ahead.

  • Spencer McLeod - Associate

  • Thank you for joining us on today's call. I'm joined today by GSV Chairman, CEO and Chief Investment Officer, Michael Moe, President, Mark Flynn, and Chief Financial Officer, Bill Tanona. Please note that a slide presentation that correlates to today's prepared remarks by management is available on our website at www.gsvcap.com under Investors Events and Presentation.

  • We are also live tweeting segments of this call via the Twitter handle @gsvcap. Today's call is being recorded and webcast on www.gsvcap.com. Replay information is included in our press release that we issued earlier today.

  • This call is the property 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 customary disclosures 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 future performance or financial condition. These statements are unguarantees of our future performance, condition, or results and 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 those described from time to time in the company's filings with the Security and Exchange Commission.

  • 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. Now with that, I'd like to turn the call over to GSV Capital CEO, Michael Moe.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • Thank you Spencer, good afternoon. I'm going to begin today with a review of our portfolio end of June 30, 2014, highlight some of our recent key development. Mark Flynn will then go on to make some brief remarks about selected portfolio company, then Bill Tanona will provide a brief financial overview and from there we'll take your questions.

  • Effective June 18, we're very excited that we were able to announce that we've added Bill Tanona as our Chief Financial Officer. Bill Tanona is a highly regarded financial executive with nearly two decades of Wall Street experience, the financial services sector. Before Bill joined the GSV team he served managing director with Fortress Investment Group. Prior to joining Fortress Bill was at UBS and has spent over a decade in various global investment banks including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, an equity research analyst covering financial institutions.

  • We are confident that Bill will be a tremendous asset for GSV Capital, we move forward -- we're pleased to have him on board.

  • So as it relates to, you know, where we ended the quarter, net asset totaled $287.1 million or $14.86 per share, NAV as of June 30th. While the net asset value of our portfolio was relatively flat at the June 30th compared to the prior quarter end, the fundamentals of the portfolio are very strong, which we believe will drive NAV and ultimately our share price in the future.

  • Twitter, our largest position represents 20% of our total portfolio. The decline in Twitter share price from the first quarter, the second quarter was -- reflected about a 15 cent hit to NAV or roughly $2.9 million. As most people are aware, Twitter reported their earnings on July 29, which exceed the analyst estimates both in terms of financial performance, overall usage, which does Twitter shares responding in kind and closed the day at $43 per share.

  • When you look at Twitter and because it's such a meaningful position in the portfolio and we continue to hold it despite the fact of the light markets. It's important to just go over some quick key statistics. For the quarter, you know, revenues were up 124%, year-over-year, full year guidance was raised so between $1.31 billion and $1.33 billion which the former guidance was $1.27 billion.

  • Full year adjusted EBITDA had been hyped to $210 million to $230 million from $180 million to $205 million. Monthly active users which is a key metric that we and others were looking for rose 6% quarter-over-quarter, 24% year-over-year to $271 million monthly active users. Normal monthly active users were up 7% quarter-over-quarter, 29% year-over-year to 211 monthly active users.

  • Ad revenue which is 89% of revenue was up 129% year-over-year and data and licensing and other revenues up 90%, which is acceleration from the 76% growth year-over-year in the first quarter. And importantly, mobile where all the action is, I know was 80% - 81% of ad revenue versus 80% in Q1 and 75% in Q4. As I mentioned, the lock-up period for Twitter was over in May 6 and we haven't sold a share of Twitter as we believe there's substantial near-term upside in the stock and we believe that investors are just now starting to understand the power of the Twitter platform and we think that as that gets better appreciated and understood we think there's, you know, great potential with the stock and that's why we've maintained our position.

  • Our investment at Twitter highlight the value proposition of GSV Capital to public market investors. As a reminder we purchased our Twitter position in 16 separate transactions, between August 2011 and June 2012, leading to our 1.9 million plus share position we hope today. Our cost basis on those shares on average is $17.36. We bought the shares as low as $14, we bought them as high as, you know, roughly $19, and as you'll hear in a bit, you know, as we typically do -- what we like to do, is we take a position in a company that we have conviction on and as we see the thesis play out, we like to add to the position. That's exactly what we, you know, did with Twitter and that's what we are doing with other key names like, you know, Dropbox and what we've done with Palantir and so forth.

  • I want to make a comment about how we're representing the individual positions as a percentage of the portfolio. Historically, we've articulated our individual positions as a percentage of net assets, but we believe it's more accurate and appropriate to show these individual positions as a percentage of the total portfolio assets. To refresh people's memory, we did a convertible last fall, bringing $69 million of convertible debt to the -- to GSV Capital, and so I think is a better representation, you know, we believe it's more appropriate to show the percentage of that total portfolio assets.

  • So for example, Twitter which I mentioned is 21% of the total portfolio assets would be 28% of net assets. So as you hear us talk about what different positions are as a percentage of overall assets, keep in mind that that's as a percentage of total portfolio assets. So looking at, you know, the second quarter, our top 10 positions represent a 20 -- 63.9% of our total portfolio asset. Our three largest positions, Twitter, Palantir and Dropbox represented 40.1% of total portfolio assets.

  • Talk about some other new and growing positions, we're very excited about our recent investment in Declara, which is now the 10th largest position for GSV Capital. Declara is a social collaborative learning platform driven by big data analytics. It's a unique company and our investment leverages our expertise from, you know, social media, education technology, and big data, three, you know, key themes for us.

  • Additionally, a leading role in Declara's recent round, financing also I think highlights the momentum GSV has in Silicon Valley. This is a very competitive deal and a number of other world-class venture capital firms were very interested in leading this transaction. We are thrilled to be selected by the company and take the lead.

  • We were joined in our investment in Declara by Peter Thiel, Founders Fund, Data Collective and Catamount Ventures.. During the second quarter, we also realized gains in the liquidation of our Control4 and Facebook positions. The IRR on each of these investments was 49% IRR for Control4 and 19% IRR for Facebook.

  • We believe that as revenue earnings growth drive enterprise value over time, our objective will continually be to identify and invest in companies we believe can grow at the highest rate for an extended period of time. Control4 and Facebook are both great examples of GSV's investment thesis and we are pleased with these outcomes.

  • Also in the second quarter we liquidated positions in Violin Memory, in Silver Spring Networks, which were losses for the portfolio. That said, however, you know, we feel very good about the state of the total portfolio position today and the fundamentals that are embedded in the 50 investments that we keep in the portfolio.

  • As a reminder, is our intent to liquidate a position within 18 months of going public or 12 months after a lock-up has expired. Subsequent to the June 30, we've closed on investments totaling $4 million, primarily in two companies, and as I referenced earlier, as we like to do, we feed our winners. And so the two following investments we've made were existing portfolio companies, Stormwind, a leader in interactive learning and Solexel which has become our eight largest position with this investment and is a leader in the solar space.

  • Let's make a quick mention about Solexel as we think this has tremendous potential and can have significant impact for the GSV Capital shareholders. We're very excited about the continued momentum in Solexel which many insiders in Silicon Valley consider to be the leading private solar company in the United States if not the world.

  • Supporting our thesis, on July 21st, Solexel announced they had raised an additional $31 million in funding from world-class syndicate of VCs that included Kleiner Perkins, Technology Partners, DAG Ventures, Gentry Ventures, Northgate Capital and ourselves. Furthermore the company announced that they've added a new strategic investor in GAF, the largest roofing materials manufacturer in the United States. We believe that GAF will add enormous value as a partner and as an investor, propelling the business forward.

  • And just to give a quick investment opportunity with Solexel, what they've effectively created is what we believe to be the highest quality solar panels that exist, and evidence of this, you know, SunPower which is considered to be a leader in terms of the quality in the solar space as an investor in Solexel. But in addition to that, they also have the lowest cost delivery of solar which is incredibly disruptive in this $100 billion industry.

  • So we're very, very excited about this. As I mentioned, we have a nice position in Solexel which is our eight largest position overall. As we look at the snapshot of our portfolio on Slide 3, we're optimistic about, you know, the future and about the value that we're creating with the portfolio. The overall fundamentals are very robust with over 90% revenue growth expected from 2013 to 2014 for our private companies.

  • And while we're frustrated by the substantial discount of our current share price versus NAV per share, we're confident that when our portfolio performs as it is, the stock will take care of itself and therefore, you know, we're very, very confident in terms of what is going on with the portfolio today.

  • Please turn to Slide 4 to take a look at equities and IPO market to date. Obviously, the IPO market is important for us, both as a way to create liquidity for the private investments we make, but also to give an indicator of the health of the innovation economy and for emerging growth companies. I'll also just make another point which is the private market activity, we're seeing pick-up nicely which corresponds with what we're seeing in the overall IPO world, which we think will provide opportunities for us for private companies that we own if we chose to create some liquidity from them -- for them.

  • So I think that's all healthy and good for GSV Capital. But looking at what's going on in the IPO world, if we look at last week, the busiest IPO week of 2014 with 16 companies raising close to $6.5 billion, this was the most active week since 2007. When you look at what's going on year-to-date, 183 issues have come public, which again, is on pace for the most robust activity since 2000.

  • I think importantly when people look at what's going on here, you know, while the activity is good, it's still is not the levels that we saw for a decade, you know, during the 1900 -- 1990s, which had on average over 500 IPOs per year, and importantly in some kind of barometer standpoint, in terms of how, you know, is the market too frothy, our investors too -- are being too aggressive, is there a bubble being created so forth, the most useful indicators that we've always looked at for 20 years is both how investors are pricing IPOs and how they're trading after they go public.

  • So typically what we'd expect in a normal market is about 20% to 25% of IPOs pricing above the filing range and trading up 10% to 15%. If you look what's going on last week, even with the huge activity, you basically had normal type of pricing above the range, 25%, and the first day top was only 7%. If you look over the last three months, you know, while you've had 86 new issues go public, 19% priced above the range, 52% within the range and the first day top was 12%. That's what we consider to be normal, certainly not overheated.

  • Let me move on. TrueCar, is one of our holdings, a completely successful IPO during the second quarter. Mark will discuss in a few moments. TrueCar maybe some people just reported their numbers after the close of day which, you know, revenues and guidance were strong so we're pleased to see that.

  • Now, please turn to Slide 5 and we'll talk about the portfolio mix amongst the growth themes that we've invested in as of June 30th. As you know these categories represent we think are the most powerful themes emerging in the intersection of fast growing industries and the megatrends of the growth economy. You can see that social mobile consist 25.8% of our investment capital, cloud big data is 24.7%, education technology is 33.8%, marketplaces represent 10.8%, and sustainability is 4.9%.

  • Thanks for your attention, and with that I'm going to turn the call over to Mark Flynn to highlight a couple of our portfolio companies in the marketplace space. I'll just make a quick point, while marketplaces the way that we kind of calculate it is 10.8%, many of the models that we invest in in the various themes actually have marketplace components of it. So we're very big believers in marketplaces and network effects and the benefits that accrued to the leaders in these marketplaces.

  • With that, I'll turn it over to Mark.

  • Mark Flynn - President

  • All right. Thanks Michael. Please turn to Slide 6.

  • As Michael pointed out, today we're going to focus on the marketplace sector, an area we believe holds enormous potential as traditional industries continue to be disrupted by emerging technologies. One of our most recent investments is Lift, a car ride sharing service that's on the forefront of the sharing economy and is truly disrupting the traditional transportation market. We've invested $5 million in Lift and it represents 1.3% of our portfolio.

  • You may see Lift in your local market, in fact are operating currently in 60 cities in the US. And each week Lyft drivers provide more than 50,000 rides to consumers like ourselves every week. We're thrilled to be direct -- we were thrilled to have directly participated in their Series D financing that was led by a group of world class investors including Coatue Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Alibaba, Founders Fund, and Dan Loeb's hedge fund, Third Point.

  • Today, Lyft has been very successful in raising capital in amount over $332 million. Please turn to Slide 7.

  • In February 2014 we announced a $10 million investment in PayNearMe. PayNearMe is a cash based payment platform that allows the roughly 40 million un-banked or under-bankers members of the US, these are typically people who lack a checking account or credit card. These consumers use PayNearMe to pay their rent, their utility bills, their loans, buy tickets online and more, and it's we believe a very exciting and growth areas, the demographics continue to change throughout the US.

  • PayNearMe has a presence in over 17,000 retail locations in 40 states, including 7-11 stores and Family Dollar stores. The under-banked and un-banked community represents over $22 billion of payment flows and we believe these demographics are going to continue to be favorable over time. To date, we've invested as I said $10 million in the company. We invested most recently in a round that we led in conjunction with Maveron, Khosla Ventures, True Capital and August Capital.

  • Turning to Slide 8 and Michael mentioned TrueCar, sort of pricing and transparency have transformed several sectors, including consumer electronics, travel and housing. The automotive industry is right for disruption and TrueCar has proven that it's a leader in this transformation. TrueCar's growth is supported by a large affinity customer base, scalable technology platform, nationwide dealer network, and a strong monetization model.

  • TrueCar seeks to become the place to go for new and used car sales and expects to capture significant portion of the US market. TrueCar raised $70 million in its May 15 IPO. The stock performed well and rose 12% the first day of trading and has appreciated to 63% increase over its $9 initial stock offering price.

  • Thanks for your attention. With that, I will turn over the call to our new chief financial officer, Bill Tanona.

  • William Tanona - CFO

  • Thanks Mark. Before I begin, I'd like to just say how excited I am to be part of GSV Capital. I've been here for about two months now and I'm really impressed with the team that is assembled here at GSV and I'm looking forward to working with many of you in the future.

  • So with that, let's now turn to slide on Page 9, where I'll briefly highlight the financials for the quarter. As Michael mentioned, our NAVs for June 30th was $287.1 million or $14.86 per share, which is a decline of 5 cents from our March 31st NAV. Let's start on the investment portfolio. With our portfolio experience net investment gain of $4.2 million in the quarter consisting of $11.5 million of unrealized gains or about 60 cents per share, these were partially offset by $7.2 million of realized losses or 38 cents per share. The net after tax increased to NAV was about 13 cents during the quarter.

  • Looking at our unrealized gains and losses, our two most significant contributors for unrealized gains in the quarter were our positions in Dropbox and 2U. 2U stock rose from $13.65 at the end of the first quarter to $16.81 at the end of June. Our two largest contributors to unrealized losses were Totus Solutions and Twitter, which as you know is our largest portfolio investment.

  • Keep in mind that our embedded gain at quarter end for Twitter was still around $45 million, but the markdown was directly related to the decline in Twitter share price from $46.67 at March 31st, to $40.97 at quarter end. The decline in share price reduced our NAV by about 15 cents.

  • Now, let's look at realized gains and losses in the quarter. As we mentioned earlier, we had net realized losses of $7.2 million in the quarter, which consisted of gains of $5.5 million and $900,000 from Control4 and Facebook respectively, and these gains were offset by realized losses of $9.9 million in Violin Memory and $3.6 million in Silver Springs Networks.

  • That's it for the portfolio. I would like to just spend a brief minute here talking about our liquidity. Our liquid assets ended the quarter at about $109 million. This consisted of $4.2 million of cash, $2.9 million of undrawn credit facilities and $86 million of public securities that weren't subject to lock-up agreements. That is it for me, I want to just thank you all for your attention and now I'm going to turn the call over to the operator to start the question and answer session.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. (Operator Instructions).

  • Our first question comes from Jeff Houston with Barrington Research.

  • Jeff Houston - Analyst

  • Thanks for taking my questions. Two quick group questions. First is regarding GSV Sustainability Partners, how is that entity structured and is GSV Capital the only investor and could you talk a bit about the strategy there? Then second group of questions, is regarding management incentive fees. Is the right way to think about that is that net asset value per share already accounts for that due to the accrued incentive fee liability? Thank you.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • Yes, thanks Jeff. I'm going to give you some just a minute 30 second back on GSV Sustainability Partners and I'm going to let Mark Flynn who was directly involved kind of structuring this to explain in more detail how that works. And then as it relates to the management incentive fees, I'll let Bill Tanona answer that.

  • But just first on GSV Sustainability Partners, we had a very unique we think compelling opportunity come to us from a person John Denniston and Tom Cain who we've known Jon for many years, he was a partner who retired recently from Kleiner Perkins, he was there for 13 years, and for much of that time, was heading up their Sustainable Growth Fund.

  • Jon came to us with an interesting idea to basically provide financing for green technology companies and -- for -- with some very unique applications. We're excited about the potentials, it's something that we're being, you know, we're letting sort of the business develop before we're going to get to visible with it, but it's something that we see very unique position in the marketplace that I would think our shareholders are going to do -- be very pleased with this as this develops.

  • Mark, I'll let you kind of take the rest of that ...

  • Mark Flynn - President

  • Sure.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • ... and then Bill maybe you can handle the question on the incentive piece.

  • Mark Flynn - President

  • Sure. Jeff, the GSV Sustainability Partners is a portfolio company, it's a C corporation. We are the only institutional investor. The other -- only other investors are the management team, the two principals that Michael referred to. We think again, there's, you know, very significant opportunity the company is operating a bit in its stealth mode right now, and we have, you know, a lot of enthusiasm, excitement behind their strategy and I think in coming quarters as they deploy some of the things they're doing we'll be able to talk more specifically about it.

  • William Tanona - CFO

  • Hey, Jeff. In terms of the management incentive fee, as you know, that is accrued but it's not something that we have taken yet.

  • You know, for the quarter obviously that was $844,000 and essentially that just reflects the 20% of the $4.2 million in net portfolio gain that we experienced there in the quarter. So, I don't know if that answers your question, but I assume that's what you're asking.

  • Jeff Houston - Analyst

  • Yes, thank you.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • All right.

  • Operator

  • We'll now take our next question from Jon Hickman with Ladenburg.

  • Jon Hickman - Analyst

  • Hi. Thanks for taking my question. When will the quarter -- the Q be up?

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • That should be out tomorrow.

  • Jon Hickman - Analyst

  • Okay. In lieu of that, could you tell us if there's any of your other positions --- meaningful positions that you have written down in this quarter?

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • No. I mean, you could go to the -- I think we made reference to it in the call and Bill just talked about a couple that had the most impact, Twitter being one, Totus being another, neither being anything substantial. If you look at overall, the health of the portfolio is we think very good. Look so now, you -- basically Totus and Twitter the two things that Bill referenced earlier, that's, you know, if you -- and again, I think a lot of this isn't so much in fundamentals it's just sort of, you know, timing.

  • So for example you also see Palantir as a slight write down from the previous quarter. Well, Palantir's doing extraordinarily well, it just so happened how things are calculated with different transactions and so forth during the quarter, so that's, you know, it's just -- it's the process.

  • Jon Hickman - Analyst

  • Okay. And then, can you -- what's the percentage of the portfolio that's in education now?

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • Thirty three percent.

  • Jon Hickman - Analyst

  • Thirty three, Okay. And you still hold Chegg, right?

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • We do.

  • Jon Hickman - Analyst

  • Okay. Then one other question to -- is there anything public you could say about which one of your -- which one of your holdings might be in line for an IPO in the next maybe six months?

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • Sure. And I will say Jon you're very clever of asking about seven questions when the operator said one, but that's fine.

  • Jon Hickman - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • You do it efficiently and that was -- that's fine.

  • Jon Hickman - Analyst

  • One after this, Okay?

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • So first of all, I will say on Chegg, you know, you saw they reported on Monday and they were, you know, we're very close to what's going on there and I do believe that as investors come to appreciate how that business is positioned. I mean they've got an incredible market share of students both high school and college that are going on to their platform, creating a student graph.

  • Additionally when you look at businesses that, you know, historically what -- you can tell by where talent goes and what the culture's like kind of, you know, how the business themselves feel about what's going on and just -- there's just tremendous excitement at Chegg, and you saw, you know, the numbers for the quarter we're great and I think the move that they made with, you know, the move they made with book ground of business was great.

  • As you look at the portfolio, as you know, we invest in emerging growth companies, primarily sort of in that $100 million, I mean the sweet spot is really kind of above $100 million, 85% of the portfolio is invested in companies with $100 million greater market value. I think one thing that you are seeing is the size -- the median size of companies going public, you know, is lower than what we've seen for really a dozen years prior. You know, you're seeing $300 million, $400 million market value businesses going public kind of routinely today, which is unique, vis-a-vis what we've seen, you know, over the -- over a number of years before that.

  • So that means that a number of our companies could be going public if they so chose to, you know, over the next 6 to 12 months. We were seeing a pretty steady drumbeat of companies, you know, going public as you've seen, you know, with TrueCar and with, you now, Twitter and Chegg and you know, you just -- you have this sort -- as you look at our -- I think if you look at our Top 10 positions, you know, which we went through in the slide, not to say that they would, but I think many of those could go public in the next six, you know, 6 to 12 months, and as even go down to kind of the Top 20 I think is that same comment, you know, could apply.

  • Now -- so anyway, it's not -- we -- because we aren't close to a number of these companies, you know, and we know what's going on, wouldn't be appropriate if we make any kind of comment because that could be interpreted certain ways, but I will say that, many of these companies, you know, could go out if they sort of chose and certainly the IPO market is supporting, you know, new issues to come public.

  • Jon Hickman - Analyst

  • Thank you.

  • Operator

  • We'll move on to our next question from Ascendiant Capital, we have Ed Wu.

  • Ed Wu - Analyst

  • Great. Thanks for taking my question and welcome aboard Bill. I had a question in terms of, you know, you said the overall IPO market is relatively strong and the private market is relatively strong, are there any areas that you see growing faster and the others are slowing down? Thank you.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • Well, certainly in the IPO market, you know, it's been open to the biotech companies and the medical companies over the past 18 months in a very substantial fashion. I think that's one of the reasons why you're seeing because smaller companies go out and they just -- it's been an area that, you know, that's been a very difficult place for companies to go public for much over the last, you know, for the -- for a long time. And none of these companies have been able to get out and be successful.

  • I think can you see that backlog work out and you see the quality of a company start to go down, you know, I think you'll see that probably slow down. But I think what clearly investors are looking for and it's -- there's an incredible thirst is looking for growth. And so, I think the themes that we're focused on, you know, the social, mobile, big data, cloud computing, marketplaces, sustainability, and education technology, these are the themes that we're seeing just incredible growth and incredible opportunity. You know, we obviously made a commitment to education technology world. We're seeing businesses which for the first time it's what I call weapons of mass instruction.

  • These are companies that are scaling very, very quickly, reaching millions of people very quickly. We have investments as you know in companies like Coursera and 2U and Chegg and Knewton and Declara, these are companies that we think, you know, we're very, very excited. But the big data area is really, really on fire.

  • And so we're excited about a number of our positions there. You know, big data and cloud computing theme, you know, we're investor in a company called Silicon Valley Data Sciences for example, which, you know, is, you know, works with major corporations and their big data strategies and so we just think

  • That there's some really exciting things going on in innovation and growth.

  • As you look -- I'll just make a little bit more of a comment on this market -- the private market area, you are seeing is I think is a very healthy signs of a broad name, kind of a marketplace, you know, for private companies. You know, I think it's directly we've, you know, we've seen interest for this business relatively new, a group of companies. I think you've seen that broaden somewhat.

  • And because you were seeing more players come to this marketplace, you know, we do think there's going to be some opportunities for us to not just liquidate some positions where we've got appropriate returns in the public market, but we think we're going to have opportunities to do that in the private marketplace. And when we talk about that, historically that we thought that would be an opportunity for us, but what we're seeing we certainly believe we have that opportunity if we so choose today.

  • So, that's -- I think that hopefully gives you a perspective on what you were looking for.

  • Ed Wu - Analyst

  • Great. Thank you and good luck.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • Thank you.

  • Operator

  • We'll take our next question from Steve Baker, Investors Capital.

  • Steve Baker - Analyst

  • Good afternoon. A question on the balance sheet. At the end of the first quarter there was about $80 million of treasury bills that looked like they were offset by about $80 million of security purchase payables. And this quarter looks like the 80 is still there and that these payables dropped to 72. Can you just kind of explain what the treasury bills are doing there and how that payable works?

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • Go ahead.

  • Mark Flynn - President

  • Sorry, Michael. Yes, so last quarter when we purchased those treasury bills we actually purchased them just before quarter end but they didn't settle until after the quarter ended. For this quarter, they actually settled on June 30, and so therefore it was reported on a net basis as opposed to a gross basis.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • And the net being the cash deposit.

  • Mark Flynn - President

  • Yes, the cash collateral that we had to post at the broker dealer.

  • Steve Baker - Analyst

  • Right. And so -- and just I guess follow-up would be, so why did we borrow $80 million -- buy $80 million worth of treasuries?

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • Well, we bought the treasuries solely to meet the diversification test for our RIC compliance metrics.

  • Mark Flynn - President

  • Yes.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • So we're literally buying the treasuries for a number of days and they're maturing a couple of days later.

  • Operator

  • And that does conclude our question and answer session for today. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference back over to Michael Moe for any additional or closing remarks.

  • Michael Moe - Chairman, CEO, CIO

  • I just want to thank people for tuning in this afternoon to hear about the update on GSV Capital. Just to reiterate, you know, we are very, very pleased with the way that the portfolio is evolving and the fundamentals and the growth that we're seeing. We do believe that there's good catalyst ahead for our companies and you know, we know that while we're -- while we don't like where the share price is, we do like what we see going on and we think that will correct itself, we're not focused on how we can help that process by, you know, being in front, being proactive with investors, with analysts, and we look forward to being helpful to anybody that is looking for more information about what's going on with the portfolio and how we do things.

  • So, with that, we look forward to following up with anybody with questions and we will keep working hard on our end. Thank you very much.

  • Mark Flynn - President

  • Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Once again, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation.

  • END