Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Carlisle Secured Lending's first quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you 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 1-1 again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today. Michelle Mehta, please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Carlyle Secured Lending's first quarter 2026 earnings poll. I'm joined by Alex Chee, CGPD's chief executive officer, and Tom Hennigan, our president and chief financial officer. This morning, we filed our Form 10-Q 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, our future operating results and financial performance. These statements are based on current management expectations, estimates, and projections and involve inherent risk and uncertainty. including those identified in the risk factors and cautionary statements regarding forward-looking statements sections of our 10-K. These risk 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. The company's management 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 additional tools to evaluate ongoing results and trends and to review our performance without getting in fact to the amortization or accretion resulting from the new cost basis of the investment acquired and accounted for under the acquisition method of accounting in accordance with ASC 805 and the one-time purchase or non-recurring investment income and expense events, including the effect on incentive fees and are used by management to evaluate the economic earnings of the company. A reconciliation of GAAP non-investment income per share, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure to adjusted NII per share, can be found in the accompanying slide presentation for this call. In addition, a reconciliation of these measures may also be found in our earnings release filed this morning with the SEC on Form 8K. With that, I'll turn the call over to Alex.

Thanks, Nishil, and good morning. On today's call, I'll give an overview of our first quarter results, including the quarter's investment activity and portfolio positioning, and provide an update on our investment outlook. I'll then hand the call over to our President and CFO, Tom Hennigan. Despite a complex backdrop marked by geopolitical events and market volatility, we continue to be very pleased with a consistent credit performance of CGVD and strength of the Carlisle Direct Lending platform. In total, we funded $217 million of investments at CGVD and closed over $1.2 billion of new and incremental commitments at the platform level, reflecting a strong quarter of originations. Despite the market volatility, our platform originations were up 14% year-over-year in the face of U.S. private equity deal activity being down nearly 25% over the same period, as a Carlisle direct lending platform continues to take share. In addition, we're seeing signs of an increasingly attractive investment environment, with wider spreads and tighter documentation showing up in our new originations as a result of volatility and the recent rebalancing of capital supply amongst direct lenders. In the first quarter, spreads for CGVD's new investments widened by nearly 50 basis points on average compared to the fourth quarter's average of approximately 475 basis points. And our first lien deals were over a quarter turn less levered at origination. We also saw our enhanced origination team drive several wins during the quarter, including closing deals with two new private equity sponsors that we had not partnered with before. The payments remained elevated with $216 million of activity during the quarter Combined with $153 million in sales to our MMCF joint venture, net investment activity drove total investments at CGVD to decrease from $2.5 billion to $2.3 billion during the quarter. Given a strong visible pipeline and fewer expected repayments, we do expect to see portfolio growth in the second quarter. Total investments at our MMCF joint venture increased to over $1 billion as we continue to prioritize ramping this vehicle given the enhanced returns MMCF generates for CGVD. During the quarter, we generated $0.36 per share of net investment income on both a GAAP and adjusted basis. Our net asset value as of March 31st was $15.89 per share compared to $16.26 per share as of December 31st. The decrease is primarily attributable to market-related valuation factors, which Tom will describe in more detail later. Although concern around software companies persists, we remain confident in the quality and stability of our portfolio. The software borrowers in our book continue to grow revenue and EBITDA on a year-over-year basis. As it relates to AI disruption risk, we continue to feel comfortable with our exposure, finding no material near-term risks to our portfolio companies at this stage. We remain focused on portfolio diversification while managing target leverage. As of March 31st, our portfolio was comprised of 171 companies across more than 25 industries. The average exposure to any single portfolio company was less than 60 basis points of total investments and 94% of our investments were in senior secured loans. The median EBITDA across our portfolio was $100 million. As always, discipline and consistency drove performance in the first quarter. We expect these tenants to drive performance in future quarters. Looking ahead, we continue to expect a wave of M&A activity over the medium term, and we are well positioned with our revitalized origination platform to take advantage of increasing market activity and to continue taking share. Looking at our pipeline, a significant majority of deals are in old economy sectors, including industrials, aerospace and defense, healthcare, and consumer products. While we are optimistic about the potential for continued shift to an increasingly lender-friendly investment environment, GGBD's current income generation continues to be impacted by lower investment yields on the current portfolio, driven by the tight market spreads of recent years. Following discussions with our Board of Directors, we have reset the base dividend to $0.35 per share for the second quarter of 2026, compared to our previous $0.40 per share base dividend, which equates to dividend yield on NAV of 8.8%. We are maintaining our existing supplemental dividend policy, which targets paying out at least 50% of excess earnings above the base dividend. This change will enable us to support a stable NAV in the near term and increases our financial flexibility and dividend coverage cushion, while also allowing us to deliver additional value to shareholders over time, as the investment environment becomes more attractive and we scale our joint ventures. As manager dispersion increases, we expect the breadth of the Corolla platform and the consistency of our performance to differentiate us through our ability to leverage Carlisle's scale, scope of investment capabilities, and dedicated in-house investing, portfolio management, and restructuring resources. With that, I'll now hand the call over to our President and CFO, Tom Hennigan.