Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. 3rd Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference 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. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Nischel Mehta, Head of Shareholder Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Carlyle's Secured Lending Conference call to discuss the earnings results for third quarter of 2024. I'm joined by Justin Plouffe, our Chief Executive Officer, and Tom Hedigan, our Chief Financial Officer. Last night, we filed our Form 10-2 and issued a press release with a presentation of our results, which are available on the investor relations section of 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 them. Today's conference call may include forward-looking statements reflecting our views with respect to, among other things, the timing or likelihood of the closing of the proposed merger, the expected synergies associated with the proposed merger, the ability to realize the anticipated benefits of the proposed merger, and our future operating results and financial performance. These statements are based on current management expectations and involve inherent risk and uncertainties, including those identified in the risk factors section of our 10K and our 10Qs. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated. CGVD assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements at any time. During this conference call, the company may discuss certain non-GAAP measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. such as adjusted net investment income or adjusted NII. A company's manager believes adjusted net investment income, adjusted net investment income per share, adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share are useful to investors as an additional tool to evaluate ongoing results and trends for the company without giving effect to one-time or non-recurring events and are used by management to evaluate the economic earnings of the company. A reconciliation of GAAP manifested income per share, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure to adjusted NII, can be found in the accompanying slide presentation for this call. In addition, reconciliation of these measures may also be found in our earnings release filed last night with the SEC on Form 8K. With that, I'll turn the call over to Justin, CGVD's Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Nishal. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining. I'm Justin Floss, the CEO of the Carlisle BDCs and Deputy CIO for Global Credit at Carlisle. On today's call, I'll give an overview of our third quarter 2024 results and discuss the quarter's investment activity and portfolio positioning. I'll then hand the call over to our CFO, Tom Hennigan. In the third quarter, our financial performance continued to benefit from stable credit performance as well as a higher base rate environment. During the quarter, we generated net investment income of 47 cents per share and adjusted net investment income of 49 cents per share after adjusting for certain accelerated debt issuance costs related to our CLO reset. Our adjusted NII represents an annualized yield of nearly 12% based on our 930 NAF. Our Board of Directors declared a total fourth quarter dividend of 45 cents per share consisting of our base dividend of 40 cents plus a 5 cent supplemental dividend. Our net asset value as of September 30th was relatively flat at $16.85 per share, down modestly from the prior quarter. Deal activity has continued to strengthen in the second half of 2024. While repricing activity continued, new issue spreads stabilized in the third quarter. This is despite the persistence of increased competition and cross-market refinancings between the broadly syndicated and private credit markets. Our originations in the third quarter were up significantly year over year, and our pipeline continues to grow. We expect volumes to remain strong in 2025 as the M&A pipeline expands. We continue to benefit from the One Carlisle platform, which differentiates us in the core middle market. While increasing origination activity is a positive for our strategy, we remain focused on overall credit performance and maintaining a highly diversified portfolio. As of September 30th, our portfolio is comprised of 175 investments in 128 companies across more than 25 industries. The average exposure in any single portfolio company is less than 1%, and 94% of our investments are in senior secured loans. The median EBITDA across our core portfolio at quarter end was $85 million. As always, discipline and consistency drove performance in the third quarter, and we expect these tenants to drive performance in future quarters. I'll now hand the call over to our CFO, Tom Hennigan.