Xencor Inc (XNCR) Q4 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

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Xencor Inc  (NASDAQ:XNCR)Q4 2018 Earnings Conference CallFeb. 25, 2019, 4:30 p.m. ET

Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Xencor Fourth Quarter Full Year 2018 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session.

(Operator Instructions)

Please be advised that this call is being recorded at the Company's request.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Charles Liles, Associate Director and Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations at Xencor. Please proceed.

Charles Liles -- Associate Director and Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations

Thank you operator. Good afternoon, a few minutes ago, we issued a press release which outlines the topics we plan to discuss today. The release is available at xencor.com.

Today on our call, Bassil Dahiyat, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer will discuss the Company's business highlights; Paul Foster, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer will provide an update on Xencor's clinical programs; and John Kuch, Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer will review the financial results from the fourth quarter and full year. Then we will open up the call to your questions.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, Xencor management may make forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the Company's future financial and operating results, future market conditions, plans and objectives of management for future operations, partnering efforts, capital requirements, future product offerings, the timing and success of clinical trials, and research and development programs.

These forward-looking statements are not historical facts, but rather are based on Xencor's current expectations and beliefs and are based on information currently available to us. The outcomes of the events described in these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to material (ph) differently from the results anticipated by these forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, those factors contained in the risk factors sections of Xencor's most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q.

With that, let me pass the call over to Bassil.

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

Thanks, Charles, and good afternoon everybody. At Xencor,m we engineer monoclonal antibodies with dramatically enhanced biological functionality and performance versus their natural counterparts. Our proprietary XmAb technology focuses on the constant of an antibody, its Fc domain or the bottom half of the Y-shaped antibody structure. We modify Fc domains with just a few amino acid changes to produce antibodies and now cytokines with improved activity, a longer half-life, or bispecific structure. These XmAb Fc domains can be readily substituted for natural Fc domains and over the last 16 years, we've created a large intellectual property estate around these novel domains, which has enabled us to build a broad and diverse portfolio with 12 XmAb-based candidates currently being evaluated in the clinic, both internally and by our partners.

Now, in December, 2018, we were delighted to hear that one of these 12 candidates Alexion's Ultomiris, also known as ALXN1210 was approved by the FDA for marketing in the United States. This is the first XmAb technology containing approved antibody. Ultomiris is a complement inhibitor indicated for the treatment of adult patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria or PNH, and it incorporates our Xtend Fc technology, which allows for a longer duration of action and less frequent dosing regimens compared to Soliris, the first generation complement inhibitor at Alexion. We congratulate Alexion and their achievement and look forward to subsequent approvals in other geographies and their progress toward expanding the label.

Now beyond the Xtend Fc technology used in Ultomiris suite, we have additional XmAb Fc technologies and drug candidates that we have partnered with other companies and we seek to continue to license and partner to maximize their potential. These technologies include our immune inhibitor Fc domain, which provides for us selective immune inhibition and rapid clearance and our cytotoxic Fc domain, which provides for more potent antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity, ADCC.

Now, the bulk of our R&D focus over the last few years, however, has been the expansion and use of our XmAb bispecific Fc platform. Our plug and play approach to engineering enables the rapid design and simplified development of antibodies and other proteins structures that bind two or more different targets simultaneously.

Bispecifics are rapidly emerging area of biotherapeutic development, particularly in oncology and we're using our XmAb bispecific Fc domains as a robust scaffold to develop a pipeline of bispecific antibody and cytokine drug candidates.

To date, we've created seven drug candidates in oncology using XmAb bispecific Fc domain, which can be grouped into three distinct classes; our CD3 bispecifics, our tumor microenvironment activators, which target two different T-cell checkpoint or agonist receptors and lastly, our cytokines. Now, as you know, XmAb14045 is the lead CD3 bispecific candidate from our oncology pipeline.

I'll turn the call over to our Chief Medical Officer, Paul Foster to review our recent clinical developments in the XmAb14045 program.

Paul Foster -- Senior Vice President & Chief Medical Officer

Thanks, Bassil. XmAb14045 is our CD123 x CD3 bispecific antibody that's being developed in collaboration with our partners, Novartis. It's being evaluated in an open label, Phase 1 multiple-dose, dose escalation study to assess its safety, tolerability and preliminary anti-tumor activity in patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia or AML and other CD123-expressing hematologic malignancies.

Last week, we announced that the FDA placed a partial clinical hold on the study and while patients currently on treatment and benefiting from treatment may continue treatment on this study, no new patients will be allowed to enroll until the partial clinical hold is lifted by the FDA.

The partial hold is related to our recent reports to the FDA of two patient deaths that were considered at least possibly related to treatment. One patient experienced cytokine release syndrome or CRS after their first dose, the treatment of which was complicated by the patient's decision to withdraw care prior to full implementation of standard CRS management.

This patient received an infusion of 1.3 micrograms per kilogram. As our ASH presentation with the data cutoff by October 19, 2018, 25 patients were treated at this initial dose or higher. Since then, multiple additional patients have been treated at this initial dose and for subsequent doses at higher levels.

Second patient received several doses of XmAb14045. Within a week of their last infusion, the patient developed chest tightness and worsening shortness of breath during a platelet transfusion for the management of thrombocytopenia related to AML. The patient subsequently developed acute pulmonary edema and then died several days later.

The partial clinical hold will remain in place pending the FDA's review of additional details regarding these events, safety and efficacy information across the study and satisfactory review of amendments to the study protocol and related documents. We continue to work closely with study investigators and the FDA to resolve the partial clinical hold and will provide an update when information on resuming enrollment can be shared.

This past December, we presented initial results from this Phase 1 study at the American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting. As we previously announced, these early data show encouraging signs of efficacy in a heavily pre-treated population for weekly administered XmAb14045. As of the data cutoff, 66 patients with relapsed or refractory AML were enrolled. These patients had a median age of 61 years and have experienced a median with three prior therapies and 30% had a history of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. A maximum tolerated dose has not been determined.

As expected, CRS was the most common adverse event occurring in 55% of patients and was generally managed with pre-medication.

Four patients or 6% experienced Grade 3 or Grade 4 CRS. CRS is generally more severe on the initial dose, accounting for most Grade 3 or higher episodes. Additional adverse events within 24 hours of infusion that were consistent with component system to CRS, but not reported as CRS by the investigators, we're seeing an additional 29% of patients. Regarding efficacy, 28% of valuable patients at the two highest doses study that is 1.3 and 2.3 micrograms per kilogram achieved either a complete remission or a complete remission with incomplete hematologic recovery. There remains an urgent need for effective new therapies in AML. Based on these encouraging early data, we believe 14045 may have meaningful potential in this area.

And now I'll turn it back to Bassil to review updates on the remainder of our pipeline.

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

Thanks, Paul. Now before moving onto a review developments in the remainder of our oncology pipeline, I'll speak about obexelimab, which is XmAb5871 and our first-in-class monoclonal antibody that targets CD19 with its variable domain and uses our XmAb immune inhibitor Fc domain to target Fc gamma receptor 2B, a receptor that inhibits B-cell function.

B-cell inhibition is a proven strategy for many autoimmune diseases, and we believe obexelimab offers patients and physicians a potentially differentiated therapeutic option, because of its subcutaneous delivery format and it's highly potent and broad blockade of B-cell activation occurs without depleting or destroying B-cells. This means that the natural immune system is able to function normally once treatment is no longer needed. To date, we've conducted Phase II clinical trials in several autoimmune diseases, we've demonstrated the potential disease modifying ability of obexelimab in systemic lupus erythematosus, which we presented last October at the ACR Annual Meeting and in IgG4-related disease.

Data from these studies support further development in these indications and show the potential of obexelimab in other autoimmune disorders. Now given obexelimab's potential disease modifying activity observed across multiple diseases, the scale of potential registrational studies and the opportunities provided to us by our novel bispecific Fc technologies, we believe that further development, including potentially pivotal Phase III studies, should be conducted with a development partner that has the infrastructure and resources to maximize the potential of this drug candidate in the broadest set of patient populations. To ensure alignment with potential collaborators, without a partner, we will not start the Phase III study in IgG4-related disease that we have been planning.

I'll shift now to our rapidly growing bispecific oncology pipeline. About six years ago, we began work to create bispecific antibodies that contain Fc domains. We engineered Fc domains that spontaneously form bispecific structures and can be decorated with nearly any antigen binding domain in a variety of formats. They can be made using standard antibody production techniques and they have antibody like half-lives.

Our plug and play approach has enabled the rapid and simultaneous development of a wide range of bispecific drug candidates, addressing a wide range of targets. We strive to be at what we think is going to be the forefront of the next wave of antibody engineering, which has the potential to deliver new treatments in oncology and other areas. Now at the ASH Annual Meeting this past December in addition to us, we saw multiple data readouts from a variety of bispecific antibody platforms in several hematologic malignancies. We believe this held (ph) the future of bispecific antibodies are major part of the field of antibody therapeutics.

Now I'll speak about our CD3 bispecific class. Now, earlier we mentioned that we currently have three categories of drug candidates built on this bispecific Fc domain. The first and most advanced is the CD3 class. These include XmAb's 14045, 13676 and 18087. These are tumor targeted antibodies that contain both a tumor antigen binding domain and a cytotoxic T-cell binding domain, which is the CD3 binding domain. They activate T-cells at the side of the tumor in order to potently kill malignant cells. All three of these CD3 bispecifics are in Phase 1 development. After 14045, which Paul discussed, XmAb13676 is our CD20 x CD3 bispecific antibody currently being evaluated in open label, Phase 1, multi-dose, dose escalation study to set the safety, tolerability and preliminary anti-tumor activity in patients with B-cell malignancies.

In early January, we announced that as part of a strategic pipeline reprioritization, our partner Novartis decided to return its rights to develop and commercialize XmAb13676. We intend to continue development as planned and initial data from the study are expected in the second half of this year. In addition, additional data from the Phase 1 study of XmAb18087, our somatostatin reception 2 by CD3 bispecific antibody for neuroendocrine tumors and gastrointestinal stromal tumors are also expected late this year.

Our second group of bispecific antibodies are our tumor microenvironment activators, rather than directly bridging a T-cell to a tumor cell, our TME activators seek to more effectively reactivate tumor reactive T-cells in existing therapies by engaging multiple T-cell targets simultaneously, such as checkpoints or agonists. That this approach not only eliminates the need for the multiple antibodies usually used for combination therapy, but allows for more selective targeting of T-cells with high checkpoint expression, which are typically over represented in the tumor microenvironment.

We currently have three TME activators in development, each testing a distinct mechanism of TME activation. First XmAb20717, a PD-1 x CTLA-4 bispecific antibody that's being currently being evaluated in a Phase 1 study for patients with advanced solid tumors. We dosed the first patient of the study, which we call DUET-2 in July 2018 and we expect to report initial data on the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, immunogenicity and preliminary anti-tumor activity in the second half of 2019.

Additionally, both investigational new drug applications for XmAb23104, our PD-1 x ICOS bispecific antibody and XmAb22841, our CTLA-4 x LAG-3 bispecific antibody were allowed to open by the FDA. We expect to initiate Phase 1 studies for each in patients with select advanced solid tumors in the second half of this year -- sorry in the second quarter of this year. XmAb22841 will be studied as a monotherapy and also in combination with pembrolizumab to evaluate triple checkpoint blockade of CTLA-4 and LAG-3 on top of PD-1 inhibition.

Finally, we're developing a suite of cytokines built on an XmAb bispecific Fc domain. They contain both cytokine and cytokine receptor domains to selectively expand and activate immune cells that can be recruited against tumors. The first of these programs is XmAb24306, an IL-15 cytokine which we designed specifically to create sustained T-cell and natural killer cell expansion via modulated potency.

Our IL-15 is differentiated from its cousin IL-2 due to its natural inability to bind CD-25, an important receptor for regulatory T-cell activation. Our IL-15 bispecific cytokine platform of which 24306 is the first candidate, provides a more druggable version of the cytokine with potentially superior tolerability, slower receptor mediated clearance and prolonged half-life and is intended for development with a wide range of combination agents, which brings us to the collaboration we announced with Genentech earlier this month. And for which we expect HSR clearance for soon.

We will co-develop XmAb24306 and other potential IL-15 programs, and we will share 45% development costs and profits. While Genentech will commercialize medicines worldwide, we have the option to co-promote in the United States. We're also engaging in a two-year research program to discover new IL-15 drug candidates including the one -- including ones targeted to specific immune cell populations, a feature enabled by the bispecific Fc domain.

For Genentech's exclusive worldwide license to XmAb24306 and for the -- and for new IL-15 drug candidates, we will receive $120 million upfront and we'll be eligible to receive up to $160 million in development milestones for the 24306 program and of up to $280 million in development milestones for each new IL-15 drug candidate. This pays the share of our development costs up to those amounts, and what we plan to be a very extensive clinical program explaining numerous combination agents. We expect to support Genentech's IND application for XmAb24306 in multiple oncology indications in the second half of 2019. Importantly, we confirm our own clinical trials with both our own pipeline assets and non-Genentech agents, subject to some conditions and we look forward to planning a number of such studies pending completion of the initial dose escalation study for 24306.

Now stepping back, we believe our broad pipeline in oncology drug candidates built on our bispecific Fc domain provides us multiple, distinct opportunities to impact the treatment of patients with cancer. We're committed to exploiting the full potential of this platform, both internally and through potential collaborations that preserve a long-term value that we have in our proprietary programs. Additionally, licensing transactions provide us with multiple revenue streams that help fund the development of our most promising wholly owned product candidates, while requiring limited resources from our internal team and providing external validation of our XmAb technology.

Eight pharmaceutical companies and the National Institutes of Health are advancing novel drug candidates that were either discovered to Xencor or that rely on our XmAb technology for bispecific structure, higher cytotoxicity, longer half-life or improved stability. Several programs are currently in clinical development, including Alexion's Ultomiris, which I mentioned earlier. We remain eligible for up to $8 million in regulatory milestone payments and $30 million in sales milestone payments. In addition to low-single-digit royalties on sales, regardless of geography, indication or route of administration. The next program MOR208 is a compound that we discovered and initially developed internally at Xencor, which MorphoSys is evaluating in multiple pivotal trials for patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

Beyond that, Amgen's AMG 424, a CD38 x CD3 bispecific antibody is being evaluated in a Phase 1 study for patients with multiple myeloma and Amgen has also announced AMG 509 a bispecific antibody built with our XmAb bispecific Fc technology is in preclinical development for patients with prostate cancer.

Now with that, I'll turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, John Kuch to review our fourth quarter and full year 2018 financial results.

John J. Kuch -- Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Bassil. I'd like to briefly touch based on our fourth quarter year-end results for 2018. Our total cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities as of December 31, 2018 totaled $530.5 million compared to $363.3 million on December 31, 2017. The increase reflects net proceeds of $245.5 million from our follow-on public offering in March 2018, partially offset by cash used to fund operating activities in 2018.

Before turning to our fourth quarter P&L, I'd like to once again remind everyone that our financial statements reflect the adoption of Accounting Standards Codification Topic 606. The Financial Accounting Standard Boards revised accounting rules on revenue recognition, which went into effect this year. As such, we adapted ASC 606 effective January 1st, this year and have revised revenue reported for the prior period ended December 31, 2017 reflect this new standard. Revenues for our three month ended December 31st, 2018 were $11.6 million compared to $30.1 million for the three months ended December 31st, 2017.

Revenue in the fourth quarter of 2018 was primarily milestone revenue received from Alexion, where revenue in the fourth quarter of 2017 included $10 million milestone revenue from Amgen and $20 million of revenue earned from our Novartis collaboration. Total revenues for 2018 were $40.6 million compared to $46 million for 2017.

Total 2018 revenue included $20 million of milestone revenue received from Alexion and $20 million of revenue earned from our Novartis collaboration, while 2017 revenues consisted of milestones received from Amgen, MorphoSys and CSL, which totaled $26 million in addition to $20 million earned from our Novartis collaboration.

Research and development expenditures for the three months ended December 31st, 2018 were $27.1 million compared to $20.4 million for the same period in 2017. R&D expenditures for the full 12 months in 2018 were $97.5 million compared to $71.8 million for 2017. The increase -- the increased R&D spending in the three and 12 months ended December 31st, 2018 of our R&D spending in the same period in 2017 is primarily due to additional spending in our bispecific Fc technologies and expanding pipeline of bispecific oncology candidates, particularly tumor microenvironment activator candidates and our initial cytokine candidate, XmAb24306.

General administrative expense for the three months ended December 31st, 2018 were $5.5 million compared to $4.4 million for the same period in 2017. Total G&A expenses for the full 12 months of 2018 were $22.5 million compared to $17.5 million for 2017. Increased G&A spending in 2018 periods will report over 2017 spending for the same periods reflects additional compensation costs, including increased stock-based compensation charges.

Non-cash share-based compensation expense for 2018 was $20.5 million compared to $13.7 million for 2017. The net loss for the three months ended December 31st, 2018 was $18.2 million, excuse me, compared to net income of $7.4 million for the same period in 2017. Net loss for the year ended December 31, 2018 was $70.4 million compared to a net loss of $38.5 million in 2017. The increased loss in 2018 reported periods over the same periods in 2017 is primarily due to increased R&D spending in 2018. As we look forward to 2019 and considering the net impact of R&D reimbursements, upfront payments, milestones and royalty revenue on our gross spending for the year, we expect to end 2019 with between $575 million and $600 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable Securities.

Based on our current operating plans, we expect to be able to fund research and development programs and operations beyond 2024.

With that, we'd now like to open up the call for questions, operator?

Questions and Answers:

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And our first question is from Ted Tenthoff from Piper Jaffray. Your line is now open.

Edward Tenthoff -- Piper Jaffray & Co. -- Analyst

Great, thank you very much and congratulations on an exciting year of lot of progress coming and I'll let if you can update on the clinical. One quick question, if I may. With respect to Ultomiris, how will you be recognizing those royalties? Is it a light period, you will be breaking out the line or maybe you can just tell us in terms of that. Thank you.

John J. Kuch -- Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. And is most likely the reporting under the agreement is going to be after the period. So we're not going to know until later. And as far as breaking it out, we'll have to see how the numbers -- come down the pike, really before we start making that kind of decision and we'll have to see how they specifically break it out because they haven't given much guidance at what point they're going to separate the Ultomiris from the Soliris sales.

So I think that's going to play out over the next two to three quarters we ask with you Ted.

Edward Tenthoff -- Piper Jaffray & Co. -- Analyst

Okay, cool. We'll keep our eyes open for that. And then just with respect to the data readouts, when do you think it's most likely -- which medical meetings, could we get some updates from the bispecific that are advancing to Phase I. Thanks very much.

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

So I would say, without having core (ph) knowledge of medical meetings, schedules and abstract submission deadline, I would just say late in the year. I don't want to commit to any specific conferences before we make those decisions on what submissions to make, but late in the year.

Edward Tenthoff -- Piper Jaffray & Co. -- Analyst

Fair enough. Thanks, Bassil. Thanks, John.

John J. Kuch -- Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Alethia Young from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now open.

Alethia Young -- Cantor Fitzgerald -- Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just two of them, if I may. I just want you to talk a little bit more about the partial hold and maybe the second case where I know that you've mentioned the couple, seemed like the persons who had AML was getting platelets and was the edema, like how related to drug was it I guess is the question. It seems like there were a lot of things kind of going on in this patient. So just a little bit more color there.

And on the second question, I mean obviously you're going to have posted probably $600 million potentially in cash, and I just wanted to talk a little bit about how you -- that starts to frame and change the Company's strategy as far as like kind of being able to commercialize assets. It seems like it would be in oncology. Are there any kind of particular areas where you really think you can grow and build a commercial operation there. Thanks.

John J. Kuch -- Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so I'll just -- the second one first. So the cash balance gives us the optionality to pursue multiple different programs and that's the strategy we've been laying out for the last few years to access multiple different biologies using our Fc technology, particularly the bispecific technology to go down -- to go down different avenues because biology risk is inherently the largest risk in drug development, we don't know biology until we try things in the clinic.

So with that, we do have ambitions one day to hopefully be a fully integrated company. I think we're a ways off from being able to give specific guidance on that, because we need to progress multiple programs forward, see which ones have the data that supports their advancement, see which ones have the characteristics that support go it alone for Xencor or at least go it alone in the US, like for example with our Novartis partner program. So I think you're right about where we want our ultimate trajectory to be. I think it's too early to commit to anything, I think it is very important to have a strong balance sheet to be able to carry forward a broad platform sort of driven strategy of making a number of different biological bets in the clinic.

Now with that, I'll turn the -- to your first question regarding, I guess you were asking about causality vis-a-vis the patient that had the pulmonary edema.

Paul Foster -- Senior Vice President & Chief Medical Officer

Yeah, so the sequence of events. As we've reported, that's about the extent that we want to share at this point, we continue to work with the investigators and with the agency to gather more data and do analysis and hopefully get to more information about causality in this particular case the investigator considered it possibly related, and as such, it's our requirement to report this event.

Alethia Young -- Cantor Fitzgerald -- Analyst

And just a follow-up to that, do you guys have any kind of thought on potential timeline around revolution of the partial hold?

John J. Kuch -- Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Well, we're going to be submitting responses in the small number of weeks as we gather data together. And then there is a 30-day window for the FDA to respond, but that respond can be -- response can be anything. If you mean more questions, and so I think that what we plan on doing is, when we resolve the hold, we'll certainly -- we'll certainly immediately announce that, but we're working very hard and very quickly with our investigators and staying close to the FDA.

Alethia Young -- Cantor Fitzgerald -- Analyst

Great, thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Arlinda Lee from CG. Your line is now open.

Arlinda Lee -- Canaccord Genuity Inc. -- Analyst

Hi guys, thanks for taking my questions. I guess I had a couple of questions on 24306 and when we might hear more about your extensive combination trials that you've planned and what kind of the data flow timelines for hearing about when you might start, when the Phase 1s might read out sufficiently that you can start the combinations. And then secondly, on 509, have you disclosed what the target in prostate cancer is 'or Amgen?

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

So to your first question on XmAb24306 or IL-15 program, the first lead asset with our Genentech collaboration, we expect to support Genentech's filing of the IND, because we've already obviously done and almost all of the preclinical work manufacturing et cetera. We support that filing in the second half of this year and try to get patients on as soon as possible, and that could be very late this year, early next year. After initial monotherapy dose escalation as is customary with combination agents you would then go into combinations. I wouldn't expect any of that to happen until the second half of 2020. And then readouts from that I think again it's starting to get far enough out that it's impossible to say, it is a very extensive strategy across different indications, different combination agents, we of course have our own trials that we would like to pursue. But with our own combination agents, but that's partnering off of that, we'll have ample chances to guide you on that as we go forward.

Now regarding AMG 509, the newly announced agent for prostate cancer that's a bispecific antibody, they have not released any details on the targets for that agent. And so we can't say.

Arlinda Lee -- Canaccord Genuity Inc. -- Analyst

Okay, and then I guess lastly on Ultomiris, can you talk about, you mentioned that $8 million in regulatory milestones remain, are those fairly near-term, are they on additional approvals and maybe a little bit further out. And then can you...

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

I would say, it's fair to say they're relatively near term.

Arlinda Lee -- Canaccord Genuity Inc. -- Analyst

And then on the sales milestones, are those set up to be fairly near-term? Are those also...

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

I think that's one we're going to have to get a feel for the launch trajectory before we can comment on that.

Arlinda Lee -- Canaccord Genuity Inc. -- Analyst

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Jonathan Chang from CVB Leerink. Your line is now open.

Jonathan Chang -- SVB Leerink -- Analyst

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Jonathan Chang from SVB Leerink. First question, can you provide more color on the decision to not start late-stage development for obexelimab until securing a partnership, what triggered this change from past guidance? And how should we be thinking about the type of partnership that you're looking for?

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

Yeah, I think what's really the change is, as we've been looking at our various partnering opportunities, as we're looking at the kind of trial that we can start in particular the inherent uncertainty in a brand new disease where we're making sure you can build enough data to show the clinically meaningful benefit that is how patient feels functions or survives, how that ties to the readily measurable endpoints. I think that -- with that uncertainty, and how you would best go about doing that it seems, putting the cart before the horse to initiate before understanding exactly what the potential partner you might end up with would want to do.

I think the kind of partnership that we would like to pursue is one first and foremost with a partner that can aggressively pursue the development of the asset broadly because we've shown disease modifying activity now and in three indications RA, lupus, IgG4-related disease, it's clearly an agent that has good tolerability and we've got a subcu format. And I think that for us now, it's the best way to maximize the value in autoimmune disease, where clinical development is long and arduous and expensive, it's is to focus solely on partnerings, that really emerged over the last, really few weeks as we've narrowed down what our thinking is on how to proceed with both the trial and is our thinking about partnering has matured.

And what kind of partnership would be structure wise beyond what I just said, I think there's a variety of opportunities, we would like some opportunity to participate -- potentially participate commercially, I don't necessarily know if that's an absolute for this program, because as we shift to our oncology focus, the kind of deal structures that we've been able to achieve with regard to US commercial rights to partial US promotion rights, I think are attractive, I don't think -- I think we've got more flexibility around this program, because again it's not feeling the same gravitational pull as the rest of our portfolio is in the oncology area.

Jonathan Chang -- SVB Leerink -- Analyst

Got it. Just one other question from me, a broader question. How should investors be thinking about the risk of cytokine release syndrome, seamless (ph) CD3 bispecific antibodies development both at Xencore and other companies.

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

Well, I think cytokine release syndrome is a consequence of the inherent activity of turning T-cells onto kill tumors. I think it's ultimately not separable, I think that it's a question of manageability and severity and incidence and we've seen this progression from the very first generation CD3 bispecific like blinatumomab where they are profoundly potent hundreds of times more potent than the kinds of molecules that are Fc structure based like ours or like some of our competitors. And I think that dropping in potency inherently built based on this Fc structure that -- sorry that inherently occurs based on the flexibility that happens from attaching bind domain on an Fc structure. I think that's helpful and allowing now people to do short infusion administration, get a bunch of drug on board as opposed to having a dribble then solely with infusion pumps and so I think the field has progressed to give tools to make the whole situation a lot more manageable.

And I think this is important is the maturing of how people manage CRS early on is happening. We've all learned a lot from the CAR-T therapeutic efforts and are now learning a lot from the bispecific, But I think it's not separable, I think it's a question of how much more manageable we make it with further refinements in design, things like adjusting the potencies of your molecule with other levers like affinity and further refinements of how we do dosing schedules, want to all the things planned, but it's not going to be separable. It's a question of who figured out how to make it the most manageable.

Jonathan Chang -- SVB Leerink -- Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Christopher Marai from Nomura. Your line is now open.

Jackson Harvey -- Nomura -- Analyst

Hello, this is Jackson Harvey on for Christopher Marai. Thank you for taking my question. For the SSTR CD3 bispecific antibody, what kind of toxicity are you expecting given expression of SSTR 2 on pancreatic islet cells perhaps there is some insight from your prior studies in monkeys that may have read through the humans?

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

Sure, so I guess the sort of question you asked is sort of a salient one for generally speaking going after solid tumor targets with a CD3 bispecific, or really with any kind of cytotoxic modality, where with solid tumors in particular it's very unusual, I don't know if I can think of an example, where your tumor target is really, really restricted to the tumor. I mean it's not a logic malignancies, it's a much simpler situation, where even if you have healthy tissue expression usually like in the case of the CD-20 antibody that healthy tissues expression is on a cell population that a patient can survive without. With regard to SSTR2, so that's an example yeah you do have healthy tissue expression of somatostatin receptor 2 in a variety of tissues like in islet cells. I think it's a question again of the balancing act of the potency against your tumor cell versus potency against your healthy tissues. And we've certainly seen and I think there's reports of it, if you hit SSTR2 you can induce -- you can induce various effects like glucose intolerance if you hit too hard, you'll get all sorts of -- any kind of tissue that expresses that you're going to expect to have damage to. And I think it's a question of tuning that effect, so that you mostly hit the tumor cells.

But it's a general question that the whole field is looking at as we go into solid tumors new approaches using Fc containing bispecific such as going to higher valences of buying, and we can use avidity effects to steer your agent toward cells that have more higher density advantage and all these kinds of things are starting to be tried. So that gives us a feel for the kind of toxicities to look for, obviously.

Jackson Harvey -- Nomura -- Analyst

Great. And then I just have one follow-up on the CD-123 bispecific, were you able to look for PDL-1 up regulation in the patients or is it too early for that kind of data?

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

It's too early just yet,. It's a very interesting thing to look for, I agree

.

Jackson Harvey -- Nomura -- Analyst

Great, thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And our next question is from David Nierengarten from Wedbush Securities. Your line is now open.

David Nierengarten -- Wedbush Pac Grow Life Sciences -- Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my question and -- might be a little, I'm after 2.5 years, but I recall a discussion around your Analyst Day about tuning CD3 binding domain, down tuning it to avoid CRS or other side effects. As I recall that 123 by CD3 that you have. I don't think the CD3 domain was different or down tuned down -- how you want to term it, are there any other clinical candidates of reflection memory modified in anyway on the CD3 domain. Are they all the same? Thanks.

Paul Foster -- Senior Vice President & Chief Medical Officer

So of the three clinical candidates, we have for CD3 -- the CD3 category, the 14045, CD123, CD20 and SSTR2, they all have what I would call them moderately high sort of single-digit nano model (ph) affinity for CD3 so not -- very high like many antibodies can be, so they all shared the same one. I will point out though that for our CD20, CD3 we went to -- and I think that the Analyst Day that you're talking about, we went through a fairly detailed exercise of looking at both CD3, but more importantly, it turns out in the case that the CD20 molecule looking at CD20 affinities that are lower, see how that impacts cytokine release and half-life of the molecule and tolerability versus depletion of the target cell and we didn't exercise in our non-human primate preclinical models that showed that in the case of the CD20, CD3 bispecific tuning the CD20 side seemed to have the most, the best effect in balancing the reduction of cytokine release with maintaining activity against the target cell. So we're always looking at tuning for the first three programs, you're correct about the CD3 affinities we reported those. I think there -- there's often more toward than that. And I would say the Amgen program AMG 424, the CD38 x CD3 they published very nice data about a year ago, showing that using our tool kit of differing affinities against CD3 and CD38 in that instance, trying a lot of different combinations of reduced affinity to thread the needle in a very challenging target CD38, which is expressed broadly off of tumor.

So there is a definite point and you're right. Yeah, the first three had shared that I would moderately high affinity-single-digit nano model CD3. Definitely a lot of activity yield looking at those parameters.

David Nierengarten -- Wedbush Pac Grow Life Sciences -- Analyst

Thank you.

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

Thanks, Dave.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Bassil Dahiyat, CEO for closing remarks.

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

Thanks very much, operator. We expect a very busy year pursuing and expanding our pipeline and feel that we have a platform, partners and balance sheet to really help facilitate that.

With that, I would like to thank you all for joining today's call.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference, this concludes the program. You may now disconnect.

Duration: 42 minutes

Call participants:

Charles Liles -- Associate Director and Head of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations

Bassil I. Dahiyat -- President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

Paul Foster -- Senior Vice President & Chief Medical Officer

John J. Kuch -- Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

Edward Tenthoff -- Piper Jaffray & Co. -- Analyst

Alethia Young -- Cantor Fitzgerald -- Analyst

Arlinda Lee -- Canaccord Genuity Inc. -- Analyst

Jonathan Chang -- SVB Leerink -- Analyst

Jackson Harvey -- Nomura -- Analyst

David Nierengarten -- Wedbush Pac Grow Life Sciences -- Analyst

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Hercules Technology Growth Capital Inc (HTGC) Q4 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

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Hercules Technology Growth Capital Inc  (NYSE:HTGC)Q4 2018 Earnings Conference CallFeb. 21, 2019, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Hercules Capital Q4 and Full Year 2018 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, we will have a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, today's conference will be recorded for replay purposes.

It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Michael Hara, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed, sir.

Michael Hara -- Managing Director of Investor Relations

Thank you, Allie. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Hercules conference call for the fourth quarter and full year 2018. With us on the call today from Hercules are Manuel Henriquez, Founder, Chairman and CEO; and David Lund, our Interim Chief Financial Officer. Hercules' fourth quarter and full year 2018 financial results were released just after today's market close, and can be accessed from Hercules' Investor Relations section htgc.com. We have arranged for a replay of the call at Hercules webpage or by using the telephone number and passcode provided in today's earnings release.

During this call we may make forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual financial results filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission may differ from those contained herein due to timing delays between the date of this release, and then the confirmation of final audit results. In addition, the statements contained in this release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements.

These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to uncertainties and other factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements including without limitation, the risks and uncertainties, including the uncertainty surrounding the current market turbulence and other factors, we identified from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Although we believe that the assumptions on which these forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, any of those assumptions can prove to be inaccurate, and as a result, the forward-looking statements based on those assumptions also can be incorrect. You should not place undue reliance upon these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are made as of the date hereof and Hercules assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements or subsequent events. To obtain the copies of related SEC filings, please visit sec.gov or our website htgc.com.

With that, I will turn the call over to Manuel Henriquez, Hercules' Chairman and CEO.

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Michael, and good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin today's call, I want to take a brief moment to personally say thank you to David Lund for his sustained dedication, professionalism and commitment to Hercules Capital during both of his tenures at Hercules, first as our CFO, post IPO offer in 2005, and most recently as our Interim CFO, where's he's done an amazing job.

In fact, during his most recent tenure at Hercules Capital, we successfully grew our debt investment portfolio by 33% to a new record high. We raised nearly $900 million of capital including two back to back securitization within 90 days of each other. He was instrumental in securing our investment grade rating from DBRS. He helped us to integrate the Ares Capital debt investment portfolio acquisition. He was also instrumental integrating our first asset based lending platform acquisition of Gibraltar Capital as a wholly owned operating company of Hercules Capital. Has single handedly overseen the expansion and increase of our bank credit facilities such as the Union Bank, a new accordion that we announced yesterday for $200 million. And lastly, he was responsible for overseeing the accounting and finance team and completing five quarterly earnings calls and SEC filings during his tenure.

As you can see, it's been a very busy 16-month for David while at Hercules Capital. I can't thank him enough for his world-class professionalism, support and mentoring that he has done to our team, and through the growth periods that we've experienced here at Hercules. We will greatly miss David and we wish him well in his second retirement and time with his wonderful grandchildren. Thank you, David, and thank you for everything you've done with us.

Now for today's call. I will briefly discuss the following select achievements and highlights. I will provide an overview and highlights of our outstanding financial performance in numerous new records as well as key achievements for the fourth quarter and the full year 2018. I will also offer some perspective and insight into the very robust venture capital marketplace as it relates to Q4 2018, including fundraising, new investment activities and of course, M&A and IPO exits realized by the venture capital community as a whole.

I will then provide a brief commentary as to a revised and optimistic, if not bullish outlook for the first half of 2019, especially as we are more than halfway through the first quarter 2019 with already nearly $350 million in closed or pending new commitments, which if all comes to fruition, puts us on pace to exceed our 2018 accomplishment of $1.2 billion of total commitment. This of course assumes if market conditions remain favorable throughout 2019.

With this renewed optimism leading into Q1 2019, we are now anticipating generating net investment income growth in 2019 that we expect to exceed our existing dividend distribution level of $0.31, which will further bolster our already strong earnings spillover of $0.32 per share, which I will explain later on in our presentation.

Because of this growing expectation of 2019, we now anticipate that this should eventually lead to an increase in our dividend distribution or even potentially additional supplemental dividend distribution in 2019 and beyond. As a reminder, our current dividend is $0.31 per share distribution. Of course again this assumes favorable market condition remain, and no unexpected US government uncertainties or shutdowns that may impact the outlook for 2019.

I will then turn the call over to David for a more detailed overview of the specific financial results for the quarter and key summary achievements of 2018 financial results. And finally conclude the call with our Q&A session to address any of your questions.

With that said, let me begin. Once again, I'd like to say thank you for the wonderful and amazing support we continue to receive from the venture capital community and the amazing entrepreneurs who have selected Hercules Capital as one of their trusted strategic financial partner. This has culminated in an outstanding 2018 record of $1.2 billion of total new commitments in a single year. Because of our increasing brand recognition within the venture capital community, our broad marketplace presence with six offices around the country and our platform that has now achieved a scale of performance, the financial capabilities of our platform, I am extremely pleased to report another record setting year for Hercules Capital multiple fronts. In 2018, we achieved the following new records. Total new debt and equity commitments of $1.2 billion representing a 37% increase over 2017, honestly it's a pretty amazing achievement. We set a new record for total gross fundings of $961 million representing an increase of 25% over the same period of 2017.

We also established a new record for total debt investment portfolio growth of $313 million during the year. And, we also established new record for total debt investment portfolio now at $1.73 billion representing a 22% increase over the same period last year. Finally, on the balance sheet, we also saw a record for total assets now standing at $1.94 billion, representing an increase of 17%. Not to be left behind, our income statement performance was equally as strong. We saw numerous achievements on the income statement, many of with sales achievements also produced record high new levels. For example, record investment income of $108 million representing a 12% increase over the same period last year.

Total investment income of $208 million representing a 9% year-over-year growth. And lastly, another record for undistributed earnings of spillover of $30.7 million or representing approximately $0.32 per share, representing a full quarterly distribution of our current dividend subject to the final tax true-up of our 2018 tax filings. This places us in great position to continue to grow and have distributions for our shareholders with this very strong earnings spillover. We also anticipate adding further to our earnings spillover in 2019 as we look to eventually begin to harvest potential unrealized capital gains from our holdings in our portfolio companies.

As an example of such harvesting of capital gains or realized gains in our portfolio is DocuSign. DocuSign alone, which has demonstrated tremendous recovery from the fourth quarter till the present period has now stands at about $12 million to $16 million in unrealized gains in the Hercules Capital Holdings, or if we harvested today as an example would represent $0.13 to $0.17 in additional earnings spillover that will be in our undistributed earnings allowing us to have now $0.45 to $0.49 of earnings spillover.

This is a tremendous achievement and allows us to eventually begin further distributions on behalf of our shareholders of this growing undistributed earnings. Clearly with this very strong position coupled with our expectations for 2019 earnings growth will only allow us to look at the dividend increase, which we expect to announce in our first quarter earnings in 2019. As evidenced by our many 2018 accomplishments Hercules Capital has not only achieved a necessary scale to succeed, but has clearly established itself as the BDC industry leader in venture lending as we continue to build our investment portfolio, while many other small scale BDCs, venture lending are still be unable to do so, or have a generously high level of concentrated portfolio positions.

I'm happy to report our top 10 holdings represents less than 27% of our holdings in our portfolio. We have implied our self in a widely distributed investment portfolio and we try to work very diligently to avoid any excessive concentration in our portfolio that we think are quite dangerous as you build out your platform. As I indicated in my opening remarks, none of these achievements and accomplishes wouldn't have been possible is not for the strong market presence, trusted brand and brand awareness of Hercules Capital platform has established within the venture capital community, as the capital partner of choice of many of the top tier and select leading venture capital firms and of course the many innovative entrepreneurs who have made this possible. Their trust and faith in Hercules Capital are measured not by hyperbole, but by strong performance and realizations in our financial results as you see in our filings.

Thank you for amazing year and we look forward to repeating many of these achievements in 2019. As we are off to a very strong start of 2019 as evidenced already by our closed or pending signed term sheets pipeline as listed on our earnings release of representing nearly $350 million of flows or pending commitments to be closed already through mid-February. We are off to a tremendous start and we are very confident and optimistic in the outlook for 2019.

As stated in my many times in the past and more than ever before, scale has become a critical BDC competitive differentiation and an competitive advantage. Hercules has successfully achieved such scale as nearly with two -- excuse me, with nearly $2 billion of total assets and nearly $1 billion in total net assets. We anticipate adding further to our scale as we gradually begin to modestly increase the use of leverage in 2019 and beyond. We expect to also begin to see rising in our ROE or return on equity as we continue to modestly add leverage to our portfolio and continue to prudently manage the growth of our investment portfolio overall.

As a reminder, we intend to prudently exercise the use of leverage in 2019. In fact, we are maintaining our target of 1.25 leverage and gradually thereafter in 2020 begin to increase that leverage, subject of course to market condition remain favorable in 2020 or beyond. We firmly believe in disciplined growth and remain committed to our G&A of executing to the principle that have led us successfully for the past 15 years. As further evidence of the discipline and approach was another critical and significant milestone achieved in Q4 2018 for Hercules Capital.

As we have previously stated during our Q3 earnings call, we anticipate and now have achieved net investment income or NII of $0.32 per share in Q4 2018 driven most part by a strong loan portfolio growth of 9% and sustained effective yields and core yields above 13% during the quarter and continues to stay in portfolio growth as you'll see in our press release again with the $350 million of already signed or closed term sheets or commitments, I should say, in the quarter so far for Q1 2019.

As we now enter 2019 with nearly a $1.7 billion debt investment portfolio and growing, we expect to continue to generate ample net investment income or NII to cover if not begin to exceed our current dividend declared levels of $0.31 per share. That should lead us to increase our dividend distributions in the first quarter of 2019 and beyond as we report our first quarter earnings call. With the anticipation of NII beginning to exceed our current dividend distribution as well as adding to already strong undistributed earnings spillover of $30 million a share for any additional harvesting of gains we find ourselves an incredible flexible operating position to make critical long-term and short-term strategic and tactical decisions to continue to invest in our platform to ensure our sustained growth over a long period of time without having to sacrifice any dividend distributions to our shareholders.

The flexibility afforded to us by having a strong dividend spillover allows us to have this maximum operating leverage to ensure that our shareholders benefit from a continued investment in the platform as we continue to build for the future. All of these achievements would not have been made possible if not for a most important asset or human capital, or employees. Our tremendous achievement of amazing dedicated employees now numbering over 70 and growing have once again proven the importance of teamwork and strong execution and strong work ethics.

Thank you all very much for your continued dedication, loyalty and above all professionalism, you guys are amazing and it would not have been made possible without all your hard work. As a Founder of Hercules Capital, and having the vision nearly 15 years ago, to create what we accomplished today is simply amazing. I take immense pride to see the many achievements and new records that we have achieved. I truly cannot underscore the amazing depth and level of talent and discipline and diligence that our origination team and for that matter all of our employees have contributed to this great success of this platform for the benefit of our shareholders. We are deeply grateful for you and we take enormous pride in our human capital and of advancing the shareholder value on your behalf, our shareholders. Thank you all.

Now, let me take a few minutes to recap some additional operating accomplishments, as well as high-level achievements, which David can expand further during his presentation. Our growth has been accomplished by refusing to yield to market competitive pressures, as we remain steadfast and unwilling to step away from any and all ill-structured or ill-priced transactions. We remain highly selective and judicious in evaluating new investment opportunities. And in fact we review (ph) and remain steadfast to our historical credit discipline and underwriting discipline that we've adhere to for the past 15 years.

An evidence of our historical -- as evidence of our commitment to this endeavor it is evidenced in our historical and insignificant low non-accrual loan ratio of nearly 10 basis points, basically zero which in addition to our massive accomplishment in our nonaccruals we also have the proud achievement on a 15 year track record related to our credit underwriting and our credit performance. Over the last 15 years, our cumulative net credit losses over the entire 15 year period of time represent a mere $40 million, which compared to our total commitments during the same 15 year period of $8.5 billion represents an insignificant amount of credit losses over a span of 15 years. Once again, this would not have been achieved if not for the hard work of our team of dedicated and loyal employees. Thank you again for that commitment.

Now, let me say a few words regarding our liquidity as we continue to bolster our liquidity, as you've seen in our various press releases. We remain extremely active in the capital markets and we remain extremely active and analyzing and evaluating multiple deal close. We feel very confident of our outlook to 2019. As we continue to grow our balance sheet, we also remain committed to broaden the multiple sources of available liquidity, while make sure we maintain a broad source of access to liquidity, while maintaining a very strong balance sheet and high highly liquid balance sheet. At the end the year we finished with $156 million of total liquidity to continue to invest in new investment opportunities. However, because of our continued growth in our pipeline and opportunities that we see, we actively reenter the market in Q1 with recently announcing the successful close of an additional securitization of $250 million completed in January 2019 at a price of 4.7% which is also further bolstered by David's hard work recently of also closing an additional $100 million under our MUFG Union Bank credit facilities, which now tops $200 million for additional liquidity to continue to fund our portfolio growth.

Now let me take a few moments to share with you our views relating to our strong portfolio growth and that of the robust venture capital investment activities. We continue to see and realize very strong loan demand and transactional deal flows volumes driven in no small part by the impressive and robust performance by the venture capital investment community, which in the fourth quarter alone originated $43 billion in new investment activities, culminating in $130 billion of venture capital investments for the period of 2018. This amount in 2018 of $130 billion is a new record for the venture capital marketplace and the data is based on Dow Jones VentureSource data.

Showing an equally strong performance was the level of new venture capital marketplace fundraising activities, said differently, new funds formed by the venture industry. This is an important leading indicator, because as venture capitals are able to raise new forms of financing or capital, they're able to deploy that capital, eventually in new investment opportunities to which we will take ample advantage of as we're looking at new investment opportunities by the venture capital. We are very encouraged to see the amount of the new venture capital dollars being raised by new venture investment funds another strongly encouraging sign of the vibrant in the venture capital community.

Realized exits. Venture capitals are quite actively in M&A and less active in the IPO market driven in no smart by the SEC shutdown that actually stymied many companies looking to go public in the fourth quarter and spilling over now to the first quarter. With the extreme market volatility that we witnessed in Q4 and specifically in December of 2018, the government shutdown among the ongoing geopolitical tension occurring in the fourth quarter all served to have a bit of a timing effect in the IPO market activities realized in the fourth quarter. However much of that backlog has spilled over to the first quarter and certainly the second quarter of 2019, which I'll cover here briefly.

With that said, we saw 17 companies complete their successful IPO debuts in the fourth quarter, representing a total of 86 IPO companies in 2018. This still believe or not, represents a very strong showing as compared to the total activities of 60 companies completing their IPO exits in 2017. However, as an encouraging and growing sign of optimism and improved outlook for 2019 we are certainly seeing a robust and growing pipeline of IPO registrations going on in the marketplace today. We are especially seeing very strong signs of Unicorns and Decacorns that are expected to complete their IPO offerings in 2019.

Adding further to the IPO optimism, our encouraging signs from the new SEC chairman Mr. Jay Clayton on the new changes of allowing private companies seeking IPO exit to begin to explore the potential IPO exit opportunities by holding plans and meeting with investors i.e. testing the waters privately with potential investors, both institutional and accredited before making any public announcements or filings. As a potential catalyst to increasing the number of IPO offerings we are strongly supportive of this initiative, and we think this is a great change in how the Jobs Act will be put into effect to help encourage the earlier IPO process and accelerate IPO process by many companies.

I would like to caution however that the new proposal by the SEC, which we support strongly is subject to a 60-day public common period after which the SEC will decide whether to move forward or not. We hope that this initiative does move forward and we think we'll have tremendous positive impact in many of our IPO candidate companies today.

Now turning my attention to M&A activities. Unlike the IPO market, M&A market continue to deliver extremely strong and healthy levels of activities. With 203 transactions completed in the fourth quarter, representing a total transaction volume of 784 companies in 2018. Total M&A transaction values paid in 2018 represented nearly $150 billion of transaction, easily surpassing the $89 billion in 2017. With the equity markets now fully recovering in some cases, surpassing or exceeding the December valuation pullback, we're certainly seeing encouraging signs of stabilizing and we're also seeing the potential IPO activity pipeline picking up. As an example of this growing optimism in the IPO pipeline in the (inaudible) alone there are 12 significant companies many of which are Unicorns or Decacorns that are queuing up for their much anticipated IPO offerings.

Ironically, many of those companies happened to be some portfolio companies. For example, existing portfolio companies in IPO -- excuse me -- portfolio companies that are either have or expected to be filing for their IPOs soon include such things as Lyft, DoorDash, NextDoor, Palantir, Pinterest and Postmates. These are existing portfolio companies to which we have high expectations in the marketplace when and if they complete their IPO debuts. Other potential well-known names not in the Hercules Capital portfolio but certainly waiting to make their IPO debuts on their outright includes such great bellwether names as we Uber, Airbnb or Peloton interactive or slack to name some of the higher profile names as well, who are expected to make their IPO debuts here shortly.

I'm proud to say that year-to-date Hercules loan portfolio companies have now completed two successful IPOs in the marketplace Stealth Bio Therapeutics and Avedro both just completed their IPO debuts I believe it was just last week alone. In addition, Hercules Capital has five existing companies in IPO registrations and expect to see potential liquidities form those registrations later on in 2019, of course, assuming market-ish remain favorable. We are anticipating a very healthy IPO marketplace and activities in much in the early part of Q2, 2019 and we expect to start seeing potential harvesting of the -- over 131 positions and over 40 equity positions that we have in our portfolio begin to monetize in 2019. As always, I'd like to caution that IPO registrations did not necessarily mean they'll complete their IPO transactions. We hope that they do, but we have to leave it in the hands of the market and when the major IPO is debuted. But we are certainly encouraged by what we're seeing.

Now, let me take a brief opportunity to discuss our views of the marketplace and activities as we enter the first quarter 2019. We remain very optimistic about what we're seeing so far in Q1 of 2019. As we continue to be hyperly selective in evaluating and reviewing the potential pipeline that now stands at over $1.5 billion of new investment opportunities that we're evaluating. This is above and beyond the already $345 billion of close or pending to close commitments that we already have in-house today as outlined in our earnings release this afternoon.

Although some of you may be tired of hearing me speak of our long-standing strategy, we remain fully committed to our slow and steady growth strategy that has served us well for over a decade. As we see further signs of an improving competitive market environment, we continue to capitalize on that opportunity, and use our surface strength on our balance sheet and scale to take advantage of those opportunities to continue to grow our portfolio for the benefit of our shareholders. We remain increasingly optimistic and anticipate continuing our disciplined growth approach in the first part of 2019. However, as we always do, we remain cautious to the second half of '19 reassess the market as the second half of the '19 and determine of our growth strategies will continue and reassess our growth strategy at that point.

Now for a brief report on our expectations related to early loan repayments and payoff activities in Q4 and 2019. We anticipate, early loan activities to remain at the levels currently evidenced in our fourth quarter and slightly begin to increase in the second half of 2019. As a reminder, in evidence in Q4 2018 predicting early repayment activities, remains a very difficult task, since we do not control or have insight as to which company or when a company may choose the purpose (ph) loans or be acquired. In fact, we typically have less than 30 day knows or visibility, so certainly see tremendous, significant variability and market conditions. We do our best to try to predict it but it's extremely difficult to do so. With that said, our outlook for the early loan repayments in 2019 represents an aggregate of $350 billion to $375 billion, which we anticipate both Q1 and Q2 each of 2019 to represent approximately $75 million in early payoffs or $150 million to which the balance of it will back-end weighted in the second half of 2019. So again to reinforce the statement we expect $75 million of early payoff in Q1, $75 million in payoff in Q2, followed by the balance of $200 million to $225 million of early payoff in the preceding third and fourth quarter.

In closing, we had an outstanding 2018, setting multiple records across the business. In addition, our record debt investment portfolio growth coupled with a combined strong core and effective yield growth we delivered on what we had indicated in Q3 on net investment income growth and solid reported net investment income of $0.32 a share, exceeding our dividend distribution. Given our new optimistic outlook for 2019, we anticipate continuing to see NII growth in each of the quarters of 2019 assuming of course market niche remain favorable, along with sustained portfolio growth and yields.

Upon when realizing many of these expectations in 2019 I hope to eventually share with you potentially as early as Q1, the possibility of our future dividend increased distribution levels above $0.31. I am highly encouraged of what we're now seeing with our portfolio growth. I'm encouraged to seeing by our earnings growth, which should lead to an eventuality of increase in our dividend and of course beginning to also consider supplemental dividends related to our impressively growing earnings spillover.

With that, thank you very much everyone. And David, over to you.

David Michael Lund -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

Thank you. Manuel, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Before I address the financial results for the quarter, I would like to say that it has been a pleasure being back here at Hercules for these last 16 months. We have certainly achieved great many milestones together in such a short period of time and I look forward to watching the continued success of Hercules in the coming years. The professional way the firm operates and conducts business and its outstanding performance is attributed to you, Manuel, and the rest of the management team. I would especially like to thank the accounting team here at Hercules for the work they have done to support me and my role. This team is a very high-caliber group of people that made my job an easy assignment and I will truly miss working with them.

Now to address our financial results. We are pleased to report our fourth quarter and 2018 year-end results. This afternoon I will focus on the following financial areas: income statement performance, NAV and return performance, credit performance and liquidity. With that, let's turn our attention to the income statement. On a GAAP basis, our net investment income for the quarter was $30.6 million or $0.32 per share, covering our dividend of $0.31 per share from operations. Total investment income was $56.9 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 8.2% from $52.6 million in the third quarter. The increase in total investment income is due to the higher interest income of $52.7 million on the larger weighted loan portfolio and the increase in core yield.

Our weighted average principal outstanding increased by $130 million to $1.69 billion from $1.55 billion in the third quarter. Our fee income increased by 19.7% to $4.2 million during the fourth quarter primarily due to one-time and facility expiration fees. Our core yields increased 12.9% in the fourth quarter from 12.7% in the prior quarter and our effective yield remained constant at 13.5% NII margin decreased to 53.8% in the fourth quarter to 55.7% in the third quarter. The decrease in margin is due to high interest rate and fee expense related to our $200 million securitization borrowings under our credit facilities and higher compensation expense.

Our SG&A increased to $14.4 million in the fourth quarter from $12.3 million in the prior quarter, driven primarily by an increase in variable compensation due to our originators meeting our funding goals for 2018. We anticipate our operating expenses to be between $14.5 million to $15 million in the first quarter of 2019. During the fourth quarter, primarily December, we all witness a significant volatility in the stock market, which in turn impacted the fair value of our investment portfolio. We had total unrealized losses of $47.1 million comprised of unrealized losses of $14.7 million our loan portfolio, $30.1 million of our equity portfolio and $2.4 million in our warrant portfolio. The unrealized losses in our loan portfolio were attributed to collateral based impairments of $9.1 million primarily related to loans and $6.6 million due to market yield adjustments.

Our equity and warrant portfolio had an unrealized depreciation of $33.5 million related to mark-to-market adjustments primarily driven by volatility in the market, offset by $1 million of appreciation due to the reversal of unrealized depreciation, primarily related to the liquidation of three equity positions. Based on analysis we prepared as of the close of market on February, 11, we estimate that the warrant and equity portfolio would have recovered approximately 45% of these unrealized losses due to the general recovery in the market, representing approximately $0.15 per share. In contrast, the S&P technology and biotech indices dropped by approximately 18% and 23% in the fourth quarter and through February 20th have recovered approximately 12% and 18% respectively.

Now I would like to discuss our NAV performance and credit outlook. We saw NAV decrease by approximately $48.7 million or $0.48 per share to $9.90 per share, principally related to the $47.1 million unrealized losses, I discussed previously. I would like to emphasize to our investors that this decline does not related to the credit performance of our loan portfolio, which remains very strong, but from the impact of what appears to have been a short pullback in the market. We saw our return on average equity increased to 13.6% in the fourth quarter, up from 12.7% in the prior quarter. The increase was due to the higher interest income on the higher weighted average portfolio in Q4.

Next I would like to discuss our credit performance for the quarter. As I noted earlier, the credit performance of our loan portfolio remained very strong in the fourth quarter, as demonstrated by the weighted average credit rating of 2.18 as compared to 2.23 in the third quarter. Our nonaccruals remained at historic lows at just 0.1% as a percentage of our total investment portfolio on a cost basis and 0% on a value basis. This makes six consecutive quarters where nonaccruals as a percentage of total investments at cost were below 1%.

Lastly, I would like to discuss our liquidity. We finished the end of the fourth quarter with $156.2 million in available liquidity, which was comprised of $34.2 million in cash and $122 million of undrawn availability under our revolving credit facilities, which are subject to borrowing base leverage and other restrictions. During the quarter, we closed our third securitization for $200 million at an interest rate of 4.605% and we use these proceeds to continue to make investments in our portfolio.

As a result of this transaction, our weighted average cost of debt decreased to 5.3% at the end of December 2018. Subsequent to year-end, we announced renewal of our $75 million credit facility with Wells Fargo, that can accordion to $125 million and as we announced yesterday, we entered into a new union credit facility, which includes a syndicate of four new lenders for $200 million that can accordion to $300 million. The new facility has a term of four years, reduced cost of borrowing at LIBOR plus 270 basis points and enhanced terms.

Additionally, in January, we closed our fourth securitization for $250 million at 4.703%, this was partially used to repay $83.5 million of our 2024 notes. We expect to incur approximately $1.6 million or $0.02 per share of additional fee expense in Q1 2019 related to the early repayment of the 2024 notes. Based on our remarks today and our overall financial performance, we are very pleased with fourth quarter results. That's in closing, we are well positioned as we head into 2019. Our long-term focused approach and disciplined underwriting standards and access to diversified funding sources will enable us to deliver strong results for the foreseeable future.

With that, I will now turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A part of our call. Operator, over to you please.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from John Hecht of Jefferies, your line is now open.

John Hecht -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Thanks very much guys. I'm going to ask three questions, first one is just a clarification, David. What was that cost of repayment in the quarter for Q1 that we would just want to one-off it?

David Michael Lund -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

$1.6 million or about $0.02, less than $0.02 a share.

John Hecht -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Okay. The second question, your strong effective yield up 20 basis points quarter-to-quarter, I'm wondering you may well -- you've got obviously you're -- it somewhat must be price maker in the market, it sounds like you've got a lot of looks at -- you have different transactions in this -- in that and the pricing is going away, maybe can you tell us what pricing is coming on in new deals versus some of the repayments that you're seeing and how that might affect yield going forward?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

So, we're actually quite encouraged by what we're seeing in the marketplace. There's been somewhat of a -- I'd use the California term tectonic shift that is taking place in the marketplace through the competitive landscape. I think that's a combination of the prime rate increases that are now begin to be digested in the market and being reflected in our new deal originations.

So the answer to your question is that -- the new deals that we are on-boarding or being onboard has slightly higher rates than the yields that are being paid back. So we're actually going in the right direction if you will. However, our guidance for yields we think that the range for the core yields is it going to be 12.5 or 13.5 is I think the new range of core yields that we anticipate in 2019. And I expect that to probably hover in 12.9 to 13.2, core yields on a blended basis as we continue to digest all the new onboarding of loans that we're seeing in the portfolio and the core yields gravitate at that level.

The effective yield is materially impacted by early payoff activities. As we saw in the fourth quarter with only $64 million early payoff activities, the habit of a dampening effect and if you look at our slide deck on page 28 on our website, you'll see that the effective yields have essentially remained flat for last three quarters at 13.5 for the last sequential two quarters in the rears, driven else far part by obviously Q3 and Q4 having sequentially the same early amount of early payoff activities of $64 million or so in that. So that's what we're seeing right now.

John Hecht -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Okay. And my final question is you've had several quarters of strong demand, strong commitments. I'm wondering, can you tell us how maybe the industry that will maybe deploying capital is that changing where the industry is a focus and where might you see better opportunity -- more opportunity in 2019?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, respectively, I'm not going to answer the second part of the question, because a lot of our competitors seem to be listening into our calls and try to gauge our perspective on what we're doing. So rather have a look at our way as opposed to where we're going. With that said, the California market remains very robust. The life sciences biotechnology sector remains great. I think we have one of the best teams in the industry as reflected in our credit discipline and underwriting history there. And so we think the portfolio is going to remain well and balanced at 50% tech, 50% life sciences at a high level, of course below that there is a bunch of sub sectors behind that, but I'm safe to -- I'm safe to say that we anticipate portfolio remaining at that cadence of 50-50 between those two primary asset classes of life and tech.

John Hecht -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Okay. Appreciate that. Congratulations, a good quarter and David congratulations on two successful tenures with the company.

David Michael Lund -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

Hey, thank you very much and really has been a pleasure.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tim Hayes of B. Riley FBR. Your line is now open.

Tim Hayes -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

Hey, good evening every -- on the East Coast, everyone and thanks for taking my questions. Just the first one, can you just touch on how you intend to approach the dividend over the coming year, will you try to match it with NII as it grows over the course of the year or do you intend to leave a little bit of cushion to grow into?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, as a reminder, dividend policy are set by our Board of Directors. I have my strong views on what I think that should be, but as a difference to governance, the dividend policy is ultimately set by our Board of Directors, as you're selling points to your question, I always believe that you should leave a little bit of a buffer. However, the issue with that is on the benefit for our shareholders, the fact that we have a very strong and robust undistributed earnings spillover coupled with the unrealized gains.

We expect to harvest, I think it will be a combination of both distributing, some are unrealized again, let me back up. I think it will be a combination of organic NII growth, as well as some distribution from our earning spillover that will set the new dividend policy going forward. And because those two items are currently being shown to be very strong leading into 2019. It will be my recommendation to our Directors that we look at a dividend policy that will lead to potentially growth itself in 2019.

Tim Hayes -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

Okay, appreciate the comments there. And just a quick follow-up. The grade one investment balance increased a lot this quarter. Can you just talk about the competition there? How many investments were upgraded and if the two companies that filed for IPOs are a part of that and if this maybe indicates even more exits in near future?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Clearly you hit the nail ahead, the level one is a leading indicator of exit activities that we expected on portfolio. I don't recall that we actually disclosed a number of candidates or constituents that are located in our bucket one category. So I don't think we were doing that publicly, I don't think we disclosed that publicly as a Company count. I will say that the number if you look at an average of our holdings, you can extrapolate that number to be anywhere between 12 to 15 companies. I would tell you at a high level look at it that way, but I'm not aware that we disclose the components of those buckets.

Tim Hayes -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst

Okay. Well, appreciate the color and thank you for taking my questions.

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

You're welcome.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Aaron Deer of Sandler O'Neill. Your line is now open.

Aaron Deer -- Sandler O'Neill -- Analyst

Good afternoon, everyone. I apologize if I missed it in your opening comments, but you've been providing some measure of guidance in terms of your expectation for net portfolio growth in recent quarters. Can you maybe give us a sense of what are your expectations are for 2019 (ph) given the -- what sounds like a pretty strong pipeline and your expectation for early payoff?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I earned with all respect, 2009 has already been accomplished, no, (inaudible) was saying, in 2019, I think that at this level again going February, so I need to preface it with my optimism and it's only February. But with what we're seeing is this level is sustained, I think that conservative lower you're looking at $300 million to $400 million net portfolio gain, there will be similar to what we achieved in 2018. As obviously year goes, as the year progresses, we'll tighten that number for you, but the fact that is still early February, the number that we use around here is about $300 million to $400 million of net growth.

Aaron Deer -- Sandler O'Neill -- Analyst

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. And then obviously you guys have some pretty good asset sensitivity structured into the portfolio. I'm curious is that rate sensitivity symmetrical on the downside as well if we were to start seeing the prime rate move lower at some point later in the year or next year. And as you kind of look out prospectively where rates could go over the next year or two, are you making any specific changes to the loans that you're underwriting or how are you structuring the balance sheet that might mitigate any downside if rates do move forward at some point along the way.

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

So -- a very critical part of your question, I don't have the percent, but I can assure you it's a policy that we've adopted since 2008. I think most of our deals have LIBOR -- sorry prime-based floor. So we are projecting the downside of prime and a few deals that we do have LIBOR. I want to say that probably half of the ones that we have a LIBOR do not have a LIBOR floor on them. However as a reminder, LIBOR will be going away. But that said, in the interim period before LIBOR does it operate, I believe 50% of the LIBOR deals we have do not have LIBOR floors on them, but our prime-based deals, which are nearly 87% or 85% of loan book does have a prime-based floor.

Aaron Deer -- Sandler O'Neill -- Analyst

Okay. And how far are those floors typically below the all-in rate?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

They are generally at the spot prime-rate.

Aaron Deer -- Sandler O'Neill -- Analyst

Okay. And then just one last question on the -- just any color obviously credit metrics have been terrific. Just curious about the two loans that generated the $9 million of collateral based permit, if you give any color behind what caused that?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. One of them was, it's an international company and with the government shutdown was going on there, there's a lot of activities going on in that sector. And because of that development they make, I got to be careful it's public, they basically make a circuit that lights up for use of mobile devices. The Company has demonstrated tremendous technology achievement. It's a very complicated physics issue to scale a circuitry say by 2/2 to 4/4, 8/8. And one of the issues that they are doing now is actually scaling the circuitry and because of the shutdown that took place and the concerns that we had at the time of the marketplace, we took the prudent approach to do a markdown.

However, we believe, given as Company's demonstrated technology advancements and it's achievements that has done that the fourth quarter impairment that we took should be reversed or we we expect it to be reverse in 2019 with what we are aware of with the company's ongoing dialog and discussions with additional capital and as progress in this technology offering.

But in abundance of prudence and caution, at the time we thought that that was right from a fair value point of view and that's what we did. The second one was similar situation, it's in the solar industry. It's had a bit of a bumpy issue, you can imagine with our President and has Jaundice or negative views on the solar industry and versus his carbon fuel vision. We support more of a clean earth and we think this company will start seeing some growth there. And then the third one that we had a small impairment is an Asian based, China based exposure that with all the trade tensions going on, we felt that it was prudent to take a small impairment related to an Asian exposure. We only have I believe two companies left in our portfolio that have China exposure to it. As a reminder, we have actively managed down our China exposure.

Aaron Deer -- Sandler O'Neill -- Analyst

Okay, great, thank you for taking my questions.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ryan Lynch of KBW. Your line is now open.

Ryan Lynch -- KBW -- Analyst

Hey, good afternoon. First question I wanted to talk about the slowing of prepayments that we've seen in the second half of 2018 and I know you said you expect them to be fairly light in the first half of 2019. Is there anything we can read into that slowing of prepayments. I would think from a competitive standpoint, if there was fierce competition out there. I think that would seems logical that would actually increase prepayments. And then also, I know in the past you've talked about pruning the portfolio, getting out of some weaker credits or some industries you don't want to be in have also driven some higher prepayment. So with the fact that prepayments have slowed in the second half of 2018, you expect them to be fairly slow and in early 2019, is there anything we can read from a competitive standpoint and/or how you guys view the overall quality of your portfolio?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I can't win with you guys, if it's just slow, you guys give me grief, if it's too much you give me grief. So I'll take it because the dampening of early portfolio repayment really allows us to achieve that optimal performance level of NII growth that we're seeing by having the portfolio repayments tapered off. The first part of your question is a very critical and important one. We have seen a significant shift in the competitive landscape in the marketplace. Scale is a major factor in that issue, those with the balance sheets that we have and the capabilities to do transactions that we do our view to very little players on the marketplace.

The banking regulators (inaudible) with chew every night also have assisted in that level, with many banks being asked to pullback or hold onto higher capital ratios when it comes to cash flow negative term loans or they're having to participate those loans out as one of the larger players tends to do with their transaction. So we're seeing a material shift in the competitive landscape and that to mention that the smaller players that exist do not have capabilities to underwrite life sciences and their expertise in that area, while they have an insignificant balance sheet unable to compete in that level. So I'm happy to say that as you saw evidence in Q3 and Q4, the competitive landscape is really manifest itself in our balance sheet on the early repayment activities as you pointed out, so they're directly correlated to each other in that.

So unless there's been some or some unexpected changes in the competitive landscape going into 2019, we're pretty confident the early repayment activities arguably driven probably most in part by M&A and IPO exits, those are the typical or historical levels of refinancing from a competitor right now. But again as I indicated in my opening remarks, early repayments visibility is only 30 day outlook for us. But with what we expect and what we see in our portfolio and the given the landscape, we feel pretty confident that the $75 million for Q1 and Q2 of 2019 are the right levels to our model into.

Ryan Lynch -- KBW -- Analyst

Sure. Okay. And then my follow-up and then, well, I want to talk about the commentary you provided in the press release when you discuss hiring Seth Meyer as the new CFO. Several times in our press release you mentioned him being a key hire as you evaluate new potential strategic growth opportunities. Can you shed some light on exactly what the strategic growth opportunities, what does that mean, does that mean portfolio acquisitions, does that mean new teams, I mean, new products like Gibraltar all the above, something else. Just any color you can provide on that would be helpful to consider, you mentioned it several times in the press release.

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Look, Seth brings a lot of incredible experience and global talent that -- as you saw we announced, we had expanded our Board Directors. We now have three women in our Board of Directors absolutely embracing the diversity of Board of Directors, we think every public company should in fact have a nice diversified composition of the Boards. We've expanded our liquidity in the marketplace. We have a broad distribution of that by signaling growth. We bought in a CFO that has a tremendous experience in capital markets and strategic initiatives, not to David not have any of that, but we're looking to expand on that platform and those capabilities. And Seth brings a very strong bench of experience in that area. And we felt that again not taking anything away from David, I think David has done a phenomenal job that as you look to kind of wind our universe of opportunities are evaluating. The business model is shifting and the last part of your question is all the above.

We are evaluating actively right now as we speak of the strategic initiatives that you include teams and portfolios that can be acquired as well as bolting on of additional ABL providers and other which I'm not going to say, other business initiative they'll will be extremely complementary through our underlying portfolio companies that continue to provide strategic capital for them to grow and allow us we doing the service or needs of our constituents portfolio companies and be the capital partner of choice that we are to them. And so I feel very strongly that strategically we should continue to look at new product offerings that complement our existing portfolio pool of companies and service their need.

Aaron Deer -- Sandler O'Neill -- Analyst

Okay, thanks. Manuel. I appreciate the time today.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Casey Alexander of Compass Point. Your line is now open.

Casey Jay Alexander -- Compass Point Research & Trading, LLC -- Analyst

Hi, good afternoon. I only have one question and that's at several points in the time -- in the past, Manuel, Presidential elections, fear of tweets or tariffs, you've taken a more circumspect approach to originations and yet the fourth quarter of 2018 was a period of high volatility both in the credit markets, as well as government shutdown, trade tariffs, trade talks and yet your team seems to kind of ball straightforward ahead. What allowed you to have a different level of confidence to attack the market despite these external factors that arguably might have caused you to be a little bit more circumspect in the past.

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, God if I'm going to say, some of them are going to hate. Our President has been cased a bit, so I think that the threat of a government shutdown has I think hopefully behind us. So that should not occur. I think as returning our attention to an election year, I think that he's not going to do something that will be precipitously dangerous to the economy as he wants to ensure that he shows good performance. But I think at a more macro level, the pullback in competitive landscape and now as a reminder, we had to manage through the one to one or the 200% asset coverage ratio through December.

So we were not able to unlock the growth capabilities until we had that shareholder vote insured, which we did and I have in the operating flexibility of additional leverage, it allows us to take a much more pragmatic view on originations. And I would also add that with the portfolio grooming and proving that we did in Q1 and Q2, we cycled out of sectors that we had some concerns about. And I think that right now we feel pretty comfortable with the credit book that we have and the underwriting discipline which has not changed that our confidence level in the companies that we're evaluating and underwriting today remains quite strong with a competitive environment that is arguably at being right now.

Casey Jay Alexander -- Compass Point Research & Trading, LLC -- Analyst

Okay, thank you for that color. And just to clarify, my understanding is that you believe that through February 11th I believe the date is you've gotten back about 45% of the market based impairments that you took in the fourth quarter based upon your estimate, is that correct?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yes, I mean as an example, we kind of give you some more evidence of what that looks like, here is a tangible example. (inaudible) loan was a fair value of $20 million in Q3, had a fair value of $15 million in Q4 and today has approximately $21 million fair value, representing a $5.5 billion recovery on that alone. And if you go through the list of our public holdings, which you can do as well I can, you can quickly see all the recoveries in the fair value marks that occurred in Q4. So we feel pretty confident with the mark to market impairment that -- the mark to market depreciation that are credit-related have and will continue to recover as we progress later on in 2019. So the portfolio in NAV decline with the exception $9 million was done credit related,

Casey Jay Alexander -- Compass Point Research & Trading, LLC -- Analyst

Right. Okay, great, thank you for taking my questions.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Christopher Nolan of Ladenburg Thalmann. Your line is now open.

Christopher Nolan -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- Analyst

Then well, the 1.25 leverage left full regulatory leverage or overall leverage?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

It is GAAP leverage.

Christopher Nolan -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- Analyst

Okay. And so before you were saying 0.95 to 1.25, so we're now skewing toward the higher end of that range now?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yes we are, because we actually see a very good robust marketplace. And we want to take advantage of that marketplace opportunities before you start seeing any effects that may start spilling into 2019 for the potential election in 2020. And so we rather make sure that we harvest the good investment opportunities that we're seeing today and bolster our earnings growth with the early part of the '19 which building a portfolio up in the first half will give a much more sustaining earning power in the second half of '19.

Christopher Nolan -- Ladenburg Thalmann -- Analyst

Great. Thank you and congratulations, David, wish you well going forward.

David Michael Lund -- Interim Chief Financial Officer

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Henry Coffey of Wedbush. Your line is now open.

Henry Joseph Coffey -- Wedbush Securities Inc -- Analyst

Yes, good afternoon everyone and thanks for taking my questions and David, it's been a great experience, I was just delighted when you came back. So when we look at leverage here, you're going to see a lot of growth in 2019, how willing are you going to be to fund all of that growth with just debt because you have the regulatory capacity to do so. And how willing would you be to basically stop any equity issuance and just build out the debt side of your balance sheet?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

As you know we're not going to respond as to when our timely or equity offerings are or may not be. However, I will answer the question that with the added flexibility and the trust that our shareholders have afforded us with the asset coverage ratio down to 150%, we however have chosen to be more prudent and judicious in deploying of that leverage. So I think that the first half of 2019 will be mostly driven by reliance on our bank lines, which is why David has done a phenomenal job of securing our partnership with Union Bank and the rest of the participating banks in our syndicate.

We expect to begin to draw down our bank partners capital lines and use that initiative. Obviously, we have to be cognizant as leverage begins to increase that we will have the reliance, the use of the ATM, as a kind of regulator to allow us to ensure that we don't trip over the above and self-imposed 1.25 leverage issue. And if and when needed, I think that will use the ATM regulator as a way of kind of ensuring that we stay within the tolerance levels. But from everything that we have, I guess models internally, we don't anticipate leverage levels to eclipse the one 1.25 for a period in 2019 and as such, we will manage to that level.

Henry Joseph Coffey -- Wedbush Securities Inc -- Analyst

And then distributed net operating income isn't that closer to taxable income (multiple speakers) insisting that?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yes, DNOI, DNOI I'm old school. So I've been doing this since 2005, yes DNOI is a much more closer proxy to taxable income than of NII because people forget in the BDC world distributions to the shareholders on a former dividend are not done in AII, they are legally, technically done on the RIC tax filing which is emulates the DNOI number that you're -- that you're saying. So yes DNOI is much more closer proximity, a proximeter to that of the distributable taxable income.

Henry Joseph Coffey -- Wedbush Securities Inc -- Analyst

Well, it doesn't that suggest that there is room for a much more aggressive dividend increase, say for example, maybe it doesn't come in the regular dividend, but it comes in the way of a twice yearly special then probably most of us are anticipating. I mean, I think most people would think you'd bump the dividend a penny or two, but when you look at it from the point of view of DNOI and you look at the likely realized gains, there is room for maybe doesn't have to be the regular dividend, but isn't there room for another $0.05 or $0.10 in specials?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Henry, you are spot on, there is no question that the undistributed earnings belongs to our shareholders. We use it from time to time to allow us of operating flexibility to invest in the platform and ensure that we don't cut the dividend as we make these strategic both short-term and long-term investments to ensure the platforms growth. But you're absolutely right, with the anticipation of a lot of these IPO candidate companies that we have in our portfolio, coupled with the potential harvesting of the dock you sign, we will be sitting on literally $0.45 to $0.50 of undistributed earnings, coupled with the NII growth that were dissipating, I don't quiver what you just said, I think that that is done and unrealistic expectations of seeing organic dividend growth related to NII earnings and DNOI, as well as doing some distribution related to the undistributed earnings as a special or supplemental dividend, I don't think you're incorrect in that statement.

Henry Joseph Coffey -- Wedbush Securities Inc -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Robert Dodd of Raymond James, your line is now open.

Robert Dodd -- Raymond James -- Analyst

Thank you. Almost going back a little bit to Evan's (ph) question, I mean the press release announcing Seth's hiring talks about strategic acquisition opportunities. Obviously, the earnings release talks about expansion of product offerings and organic growth. So would it be reasonable to conclude that you're expectations maybe you can add kind of the same way you did with the asset-backed lending that you can add more products through the acquisition channel rather than just organically on the product front?

Manuel A. Henriquez -- Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

That that's correct, but our earnings outlook as of right now for 2019 are all embed inorganic, we do not include any of the strategic initiatives that we're evaluating right now. And you're absolutely correct it's a fusion of both, it's both product and team or company acquisitions as we