OREANDA-NEWS. Great Elm Capital Corp. (NASDAQ:GECC) announced today that its board of directors set its regular monthly distribution beginning in January 2017. GECC is a recently formed business development company that completed its merger with Full Circle Capital Corporation ("Full Circle") on November 3, 2016.

The initial distribution will commence at a 7% annual yield on NAV per share of $14.41, which equates to a monthly distribution of $0.083 per share. In addition to the regular monthly distribution, an incremental distribution of $0.166 per share, representing the estimated net investment income generated from the merger closing through year-end 2016, will be paid to stockholders of record as of December 30, 2016 on January 16, 2017.

The below table illustrates the distributions anticipated to be paid to stockholders of record as of December 30, 2016 through March 31, 2017:

Month Rate Record Date Payable Date
December   $ 0.166   December 30, 2016   January 16, 2017
January   $ 0.083   January 31, 2017   February 16, 2017
February   $ 0.083   February 28, 2017   March 15, 2017
March   $ 0.083   March 31, 2017   April 17, 2017

Peter A. Reed, the Chief Executive Officer of GECC, has reiterated his and the team’s commitment to grow GECC’s distribution to an annual 9% yield once the portfolio is fully invested. The initial distribution yield of 7% is driven predominantly by a faster than anticipated conversion of the acquired Full Circle portfolio to cash, which Mr. Reed and the team view as a long-term positive for GECC, albeit a short-term hindrance to the generation of net interest income. The team intends to continue to focus GECC’s portfolio in leveraged loans and high yield bonds trading in the secondary market complemented with opportunistic, originated financings.

GECC also filed its opening balance sheet, showing approximately $185 million in net assets and the fair value of the portfolio on November 3, 2016.

Lastly, GECC commenced its previously announced $15 million 10b5-1 plan in November 2016 and through December 23, 2016 successfully purchased an aggregate of over 94,000 shares at an average price of approximately $10.72 per share, which represents 74% of opening NAV per share. “We view the ability to repurchase shares at the steep discount prevailing in the market to be extremely  accretive to NAV and a demonstration of our focus on and commitment to delivering long-term stockholder value,” said Mr. Reed.