BlackRock Capital Investment Corporation

Good morning. My name is Alan, and I'll be your conference facilitator today for the BlackRock Capital Investment Corporation third quarter 2021 earnings call. Hosting the call will be James Keenan, Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer, Nick Singall, President, Abby Miller, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Lawrence D. Paredes, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Marshall Merriman, Managing Director and Member of the Company's Investment Committee, and Jason Merring, Managing Director and Member of the Company's Investment Committee. Lines at this time have been placed on mute. After the speakers complete their update, they will open the line for a question and answer session. In order to ask a question, you can press star 1 on your touchtone telephone. Thank you. Mr. Paredes, you may begin the conference call.

Good morning and welcome to the third quarter 2021 earnings conference call of BlackRock Capital Investment Corporation, or BCIC. Before we begin our remarks today, I would like to point out that certain comments made during the conference call and within corresponding documents contain forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties. Many of these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as anticipates, believes, expects, intends, will, should, may, and similar expressions. We call to your attention the fact that BCIC's actual results may differ from these statements. As you know, BCIC has filed with the SEC reports which list some of the factors which may cause BCIC's results to differ materially from these statements. BCIC assumes no duty to and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. Additionally, certain information discussed and presented may have been derived from third-party sources and has not been independently verified. Accordingly, BCIC makes no representation or warranty with respect to such information. Please note, we've posted to our website an investor presentation that complements this call. Shortly, Jim will highlight some of the information contained in the presentation. The presentation can be accessed by going to our website at www.blackrockbkcc.com and clicking the November 2021 investor presentation link in the presentations section of the investors page. I would now like to turn the call over to Jim.

Thank you, Larry. Good morning, and thanks to all of you for joining our third quarter earnings call. I'll provide an update on our strategic goals and priorities as well as our third quarter performance. Nick Singhal will then give an update on our portfolio activity and status. and Abby Miller will follow with a discussion of our financial results in more detail. We will then open the call to questions. We continue to expand our universe of investment opportunities and diversifying and strengthening our portfolio. In doing so, we bolstered NII and increased NAV in the quarter, while building the portfolio for long-term strength and stability. Importantly, we have substantially completed our strategic rotation out of non-core legacy assets. These investments now consist of less than 5% of the total portfolio at fair market value, the majority of which is performing debt. This compares with 8% at the end of the second quarter and 16% at the close of 2019. With the extensive resources and scale of the BlackRock platform, as well as our team's deep middle market experience, we are finding compelling opportunities across more sectors. We are generating solid risk-adjusted returns by focusing on income-generating senior secured loans and primarily first lien positions. We deployed $63 million of new capital in the third quarter, grew our investment portfolio by $9 million, and increased our adjusted NII by 28%. Of the new investment dollars in the quarter, the vast majority were in first lien term loans. Approximately 68% of the portfolio now consists of first lien investments. This is double the level at which we started 2020 and represents remarkable progress. We now have 78 portfolio companies, up from 74 at the close of the second quarter, and 47 at the end of 2019. Through the first nine months of this year, we have deployed over $206 million on a gross basis, including investments in 35 new portfolio companies. We anticipate further progress as we selectively deploy capital and continue to build the portfolio in coming quarters. Recognizing the market remains competitive, and inflationary pressures are mounting in the economy, we are comfortable with our portfolio construction and focused on building a diversified portfolio of senior secured floating rate investments. We are confident with the health and resiliency of the overall portfolio. Leverage was now relatively stable during the quarter as exits and repayments nearly offset gross deployments. The repayments this quarter included approximately $20 million of cash received from the sale of SPP equity, a non-core position. We expect to prudently utilize our leverage runway as we identify appealing investments and expand the portfolio, which we expect will be accretive to NII and provide increased dividend coverage for our shareholders. I'll now turn the call over to Nixon Gall to discuss our portfolio activity in further detail.