That dividend was made possible by the successful completion of the first stage of our return of capital strategy, accomplishing a series of successful exits, including Propeller and Transactis earlier in 2019 and the repayment of our $85 million in debt.
In aggregate, to date, we have returned over $187 million to our balance sheet, including over $104 million in 2019 via exit transactions since we began our new strategic direction in 2018.
The disciplined approach to managing our portfolio and realizing exit proceeds has not only resulted in Safeguard being debt free and initiating our return of value transactions, but also provided us with $25 million of cash today that is sufficient to fund our scaled down operations and expected deployments.
Most importantly, Safeguard continues to hold a valuable portfolio of ownership interests, representing approximately $230 million of deployed capital in 15 tech-enabled companies and our other ownership interests.
Six of our companies have run rates of between $5 million and $10 million of annual revenue.
Another six have run rates of over $10 million.
And the average growth rate of the non-digital media companies is 54%.
Whenever we have cash and cash equivalents exceeding our minimum required capital, currently $25 million, we will evaluate a return of value to our shareholders in the most efficient manner in the form of either share repurchases and/or dividends.
For the year ended December 31, 2019, Safeguard's net income was $54.6 million or $2.64 per share.
That's compared with a net loss of $15.6 million or $0.76 per share for the same period in 2018.
Our fourth quarter resulted in a net loss of $0.7 million or $0.03 per share as compared with a net loss of $16.6 million or $0.81 per share for the same quarter in 2018.
Two large elements impacting the financial results and our financial position for the fourth quarter included the continued downward trajectory of our general and administrative costs as compared to prior periods and of course the $1 per share return of capital dividend.
Safeguard's cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and securities at December 31, 2019 totaled $25 million, and we have no debt obligations.
As we've also previously discussed, the Board declared a $1 per share special dividend that was paid on December 30.
Now I'll move back to our results of operations for the 2019 year, which includes the previously disclosed successes such as a $35.1 million gain from the exit of Propeller and a $50.7 million gain related to the exit from Transactis.
In addition, we have recorded aggregate gains of $4.3 million for additional amounts received for holdbacks and escrows related to the other prior transactions, including $2.6 million of which occurred in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Our 2019 results also included the impairment we disclosed in the second quarter of $3 million with respect to our interest in NovaSom.
Our general and administrative expenses were $2.1 million and $10 million for the three months and year ended December 31, 2019 respectively.
The decrease relative to the prior year is primarily due to a decrease in employee compensation from a lower overall level of staffing, the absence of $3.8 million in severance charges and lower professional fees.
For the fourth quarter, corporate expenses, which represent general and administrative expenses, excluding depreciation, stock-based compensation, severance and retirement costs and other nonrecurring or other items, were $1.4 million compared with $1.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2018.
For the ended December 31, 2019, those same expenses were $7.1 million as compared to $9.9 million in 2018.
Our quarterly results also included $2.2 million of other income that was primarily the result of the removal of the estimates of our liabilities under the previous commitments to our former CEO, Mr. Musser who passed away in late 2019.
Other income for the 2019 annual period also included previously disclosed non-cash gain from the credit derivative of $5.1 million and $4.5 million of observable price changes from a variety of our ownership interests.
I should also note that our annual results included interest expense of $14 million related to the credit facility that was repaid in July of 2019.
We also benefited during 2019 from the recognition of $2 million of interest income from our cash, marketable securities and convertible loans.
With respect to our ownership interests at December 31, 2019, we have a carrying value of $77.1 million, which is a reduction from 2018 primarily from exits, impairments and the application of equity method accounting.
During the fourth quarter, we limited deployments to $2.2 million to three existing companies, bringing 2019 follow-on funding to $16.7 million.
We expect that we will make additional deployments in 2020 so that we can continue to support our ownership interests, but in the aggregate, we expect those deployments to be between $5 million and $10 million.
Our share of the losses of our equity method ownership interest for the three months ended December 31, 2019, was $4.2 million as compared to $8.9 million for the comparable period in 2018.
Similarly, for the annual 2019 period, we experienced a reduction of $20.6 million related to our losses from our share of the losses of our equity method companies.
Aggregate annual revenue for 2019 of Safeguard's 15 remaining ownership interests, which we have previously referred to as partner companies, was $357 million.
Aggregate revenue for the same companies was $330 million for 2018, representing a growth 8% for the group.
Excluding those digital media companies, the aggregate year-over-year revenue of Safeguard's portfolio of partner companies grew at 41%.

Summary:
Six of our companies have run rates of between $5 million and $10 million of annual revenue.
Our fourth quarter resulted in a net loss of $0.7 million or $0.03 per share as compared with a net loss of $16.6 million or $0.81 per share for the same quarter in 2018.
We expect that we will make additional deployments in 2020 so that we can continue to support our ownership interests, but in the aggregate, we expect those deployments to be between $5 million and $10 million.