Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Carlisle Secured Lending Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Daniel Hon. You may begin.

Good morning and welcome to Carlyle Secured Lending's second quarter 2022 earnings call. Last night, we issued a press release and earnings presentation outlining our quarterly results, both of which are available on the investor relations section on our website. Following our remarks today, we will hold a question and answer session for analysts and institutional investors. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available on our website. Any forward-looking statements made today do not guarantee future performance, and any undue reliance should not be placed on that. These statements are based on current management expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including those identified in the risk factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated. Carlisle Secured Lending assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements at any time. With that, I'll turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Linda Pace.

Thank you, Dan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us to discuss another strong quarter of performance. With me on the call today is our President and Chief Investment Officer, Taylor Boswell, and our Chief Financial Officer, Tom Hennigan. Before we begin, I'd like to highlight a few key themes that you will hear from us throughout today's call. First, we remain committed to our goal of delivering sustainable income by constructing a diversified portfolio of senior secured floating rate loans to high quality sponsors and borrowers. Second, we are pleased to announce the increase of our base dividend rate starting in the third quarter. Third, we are well positioned to continue increasing our base dividend over the coming quarters. Turning now to my usual quarterly remarks, I'll focus on three topics. I'll start with an overview of our second quarter financing results. Next, I'll touch on our credit performance and investment activity. And finally, I'll conclude with a few thoughts on how we are approaching the current investment environment. We generated solid net investment income of 40 cents per share, despite our LIBOR floors limiting the earnings benefit from higher base rates during the quarter. We declared total third quarter dividends of 40 cents per share consisting of our newly increased $0.34 per share base dividend plus a $0.06 per share supplemental dividend. Our net asset value for the second quarter was $16.81 per share, approximately 1.8% lower than the prior quarter's NAV. This decline was almost entirely driven by the impact of widening market yields. Importantly, our NAV remains 1.5% above our pre-COVID NAV in Q4 2019, reflecting strong through-cycle performance. We repurchased an additional $7 million of our common stock during the quarter, resulting in 3 cents of accretion to our net asset value per share. Once again, we were active repurchasers of our stock during the quarter based on its valuation and the attractiveness of the returns for our shareholders. In total, we have repurchased over 10 million shares, or 17% of our float, since the commencement of our share repurchase program. The Board of Directors approved a $50 million increase to the program and extended it through November 2023. This stock repurchase program represents just one aspect of our firm and continued commitment to creating value for our shareholders. Turning now to the portfolio, We continued to see positive credit performance in our portfolio, especially in our watch list names. As Tom will discuss further, we expect to see a lower level of non-accruals in the third quarter. We funded $199 million of new investments in the second quarter, essentially all of which were in a first lien position. Total repayments and sales in the second quarter were $161 million. We ended the quarter with just under $1.9 billion of investments. roughly in line with the prior quarter. Looking ahead, we feel very good about our positioning of the portfolio, our funded asset level, and leverage being at the lower end of our target range. This will allow us to selectively deploy capital into attractive opportunities in this favorable investment environment. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to our president, Taylor Boswell.