Firsthand Technology Value Fund Says It Expects to Withdraw Its BDC Election Before August 31 and Pursue Liquidation

by Renée Delacroix · August 21, 2026

Senior Analyst, The MicroCap Herald

Firsthand Technology Value Fund, Inc., a business development company whose shares trade on the OTCQB marketplace under the symbol SVVC, has told the Securities and Exchange Commission that it expects to begin unwinding itself within days. In a Form 8-K filed on August 18, 2026, reporting an earliest event date of August 17, the fund disclosed that both of its independent directors had resigned and that it expects to file Form N-54C before August 31, 2026 to withdraw its election to be treated as a business development company under the Investment Company Act of 1940, and then to pursue liquidation and dissolution. That deadline has not yet arrived, and in the filings and the filings index the Herald reviewed the company has not reported that the withdrawal has been made.

The resignations came first. Effective at the close of business on August 17, 2026, the 8-K reports, each of the fund's directors “who is an independent or disinterested director within the meaning of the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended” resigned as a director. “The resigning directors were Greg Burglin and Kimun Lee,” the filing says. “After those resignations, Kevin Landis remains as the sole director of the Company.” No reason is stated for either departure. The same item reports that certain other officers also resigned effective at the close of business on the same day — Nichole Mileski as chief compliance officer and assistant secretary, and Kelvin Leung as secretary — and that Landis “remains as the President and Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Financial Officer and now also serves as Secretary of the Company.” The filing adds that the company “does not plan to replace those resigning directors because it expects to file to withdraw its status as a business development company under the Company Act before August 31, 2026, and to pursue liquidation and dissolution.”

The mechanics matter here, and the filing is unusually direct about them. A business development company is a closed-end fund that elects, by filing a form with the Commission, to be regulated under a specific part of the Investment Company Act of 1940 — a regime that governs how such a fund invests, values its holdings, borrows and reports. Form N-54C is the notification a fund files to withdraw that election. Item 8.01 of the 8-K states: “The Company expects to file Form N-54C before August 31, 2026 to withdraw its election to be treated as a business development [sic] under the Company Act.” Item 3.01 sets out what the fund says would follow: “Upon the Company's submission of the withdrawal of its election to be treated as a business development company (see Item 8.01 below), it will file to delist its common stock from the over-the-counter market (known as OTCQB). Accordingly, the Company's shares will cease trading.” Both steps are prospective and conditioned on a Form N-54C the company has not reported filing; neither has occurred as of publication, and they are reported here as the company's stated expectation rather than as settled outcomes. The 8-K does not, in the rendering the Herald reviewed, set out a timetable for the liquidation and dissolution that would follow, describe how any remaining assets would be distributed, or state whether stockholder approval is required or has been obtained.

The balance sheet behind the decision was filed four days earlier. The fund's quarterly report on Form 10-Q, filed August 14, 2026 for the period ended June 30, 2026, shows total assets of $148,694 against total liabilities of $595,775, producing net assets of negative $447,081. The assets are investments carried at $148,635 plus a $59 receivable for dividends and interest. Net asset value per share is reported as $0.00 on 6,892,518 shares outstanding. Dividing negative $447,081 by 6,892,518 shares produces roughly negative six and a half cents per share, so the reported $0.00 is a per-share line sitting above a negative net asset figure rather than a portfolio that happens to be worth exactly nothing. The filing does not explain how the two presentations are reconciled.

The deficit is not new as of this quarter, and it is widening. The comparative column of the same statement shows total assets of $270,161, total liabilities of $505,289 and net assets of negative $235,128 at December 31, 2025. The gap between the two dates is $211,953 — the amount by which the deficit deepened over the six months.

The liabilities are almost entirely amounts owed to insiders and service providers rather than to lenders. The filing itemises a payable to affiliates of $300,612, accrued expenses and other payables of $239,163, deferred directors' fees payable of $37,500, directors' fees payable of $12,500 and a consulting fee payable of $6,000. Those five captions sum exactly to the stated $595,775. Whether the payable to affiliates will be paid, waived or restructured in a liquidation is not addressed on the face of the statements.

What is left of the portfolio is small and concentrated in one name. The fund's investments carry a fair value of $148,635. UCT Coatings, Inc. common stock accounts for nearly all of it, carried at $141,197 against a cost of $662,235. The fund's IntraOp Medical Corp. positions — convertible notes, term notes and preferred stock — carry a combined fair value of $3,535. Its holdings in Lyncean Technologies, Inc. Series B preferred stock, Revasum, Inc. CHESS depositary interests and Wrightspeed, Inc. common and preferred stock are each carried at zero fair value. The remaining $3,903 sits in a Fidelity Investments Money Market Treasury Portfolio Class I position, carried at its cost. Those carrying values sum exactly to the stated $148,635.

The distance between what the portfolio cost and what it is now worth is the fund's whole history in one line. The filing puts the cost of the fund's investments at $89,862,162 against the $148,635 fair value, a difference of $89,713,527. That $89.86 million is a cost basis accumulated over the fund's life. It is not money raised in the period, not a cash balance, and not a measure of realised losses. The components of net assets tell the same story from the other side: paid-in capital of $176,770,722 against total distributable earnings of negative $177,224,696.

Operations have effectively stopped. Total investment income was $214 for the three months ended June 30, 2026 and $354 for the six months. Net expenses were negative $6,061 for the quarter — a credit rather than a charge — and $178,178 for the half, leaving net investment income of $6,275 for the three months and a net investment loss of $177,824 for the six months before tax. A $19,700 income tax expense takes the six-month net investment loss to $197,524. The balance sheet shows no cash. The annualised ratio of total expenses to average net assets for the six-month period is 101.57%, a figure that should be read with caution: when the denominator is a net asset base near zero or negative, any ratio expressed against it distorts.

The 10-Q addresses the fund's condition directly in a going-concern note. Management writes that liabilities exceeding assets, continuing losses and a lack of operating cash flows “raise substantial doubt about the Company's ability to continue as a going concern.” The note describes management's plans, which include asset sales, a possible liquidation, a cash infusion from the adviser, capital raising and reductions in overhead, while stating that their success is not guaranteed. Read against the 8-K filed four days later, the liquidation alternative named in that note is no longer one option among several but the course the fund says it now intends to take.

Some limits on this account should be stated plainly. The 10-Q discloses a closing price of $0.02 per share on June 30, 2026; that is a quarter-end figure disclosed inside the document, not a current quote, and the Herald has not sourced a recent time-stamped price for SVVC and does not publish one here. Neither filing describes the fund as insolvent, describes the shares as worthless, or discloses a bankruptcy filing, and none of those things is asserted here. The Herald found no confirmed SEC enforcement matter involving the fund or its adviser in 2026, and none is alleged.

On sourcing, the Herald should be plain about what it has and has not read. The 8-K and the 10-Q described above were retrieved and checked on August 21, 2026 as renderings published by StockTitan — the filing page for each document, plus StockTitan's index of the fund's SEC filings — and every figure, quoted passage, the going-concern language and the OTCQB venue reported here were taken from those renderings and matched against them line by line. The Herald has not read either document on sec.gov and does not claim to have; the passages quoted above are quoted as StockTitan reproduces them. Nor has the Herald retrieved a Form N-54C: none appears on the filings index the desk reviewed, and the 8-K itself describes that filing in the future tense. All three renderings are cited below.

What the filings establish is narrow and documented. As of June 30, 2026 this fund's liabilities exceeded its assets by $447,081, its remaining portfolio was carried at $148,635, and its own management told the Commission that substantial doubt exists about its ability to continue as a going concern. As of August 18, 2026 its independent directors had resigned, one director remained, and the company said it expects to withdraw its business development company election before August 31, 2026 and then pursue liquidation and dissolution, after which it says its shares will cease trading. This is a fund with negative net assets, a reported net asset value per share of $0.00 and disclosed going-concern doubt, trading on OTCQB with a stated intention to wind up. Nothing in this article is investment advice or a view on the shares.