Capital Southwest Corporation

Thank you for joining today's Capital Southwest First Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 earnings call. Participating on the call today are Bowen Deal, Chief Executive Officer, Michael Sarna, Chief Finance Officer, Josh Weinstein, Chief Investment Officer, and Chris Rehberger, Executive Vice President of Finance. I will now turn the call over to Chris Rehberger.

Thank you. I would like to remind everyone that in the course of this call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current conditions, currently available information, and management's expectations, assumptions, and beliefs. They are not guaranteed as future results and are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. For information concerning these risks and uncertainties, see Capital Southwest's publicly available filings with the SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, changing circumstances, or any other reason after the date of this press release, except as required by law. I will now hand the call off to our Chief Executive Officer, Bowen Deal.

Thanks,

Chris,

and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our first quarter Fiscal Year 2025 earnings call. We are pleased to be with you this morning and look forward to giving you an update on the performance of our company and our portfolio as we continue to diligently execute our investment strategy as stewards of your capital. Throughout our prepared marks, we will refer to various slides in our earnings presentation which can be found in the investor relations section of our website at .capitalsouthwest.com. You will also find our quarterly earnings press release issued last evening on our website. We'll now begin on slide six of the earnings presentation where we have summarized some of the key performance highlights for the quarter. During the quarter, we generated pre-tax net investment income of 69 cents per share, which more than covered both our regular dividend of 57 cents per share and our supplemental dividend of six cents per share paid during the quarter. Our portfolio earnings continue to be strong and as of the end of the quarter, we estimate that our undistributed taxable income was 50 cents per share. As we look forward to the September quarter, we are pleased to announce that our board of directors has declared a one cent per share increase to our regular dividend to 58 cents per share for the quarter ending September 30, 2024. Our board also declared a supplemental dividend of six cents per share, bringing total dividends declared for the September quarter to 64 cents per share. Deal quality and activity in the low-income market during the June quarter continued at a healthy pace as private equity firms and business owners continued to transact. That said, liquidity in the market and competition from both bank and non-bank lenders for quality deals has increased meaningfully over the past couple of quarters. This has resulted in tighter spreads on quality deals and to a lesser extent, slightly higher leverage levels. We have built a tremendous nationwide network of deal sources and our team has been doing an extraordinary job sourcing deals in this market. We continue to close deals at long value levels of 40 to 50% resulting in significant equity capital cushion below our debt and reasonable leverage levels of around three and a half times that the EBITDA. Over the past decade, our team has done an excellent job generating attractive returns for our shareholders in all competitive environments and I am highly confident we will continue our track record in the current environment. Josh Wallingstein, our chief investment officer will provide additional color on the market, our investment activity and the performance of our portfolio later in our prepared remarks. Portfolio activity during the quarter consisted of 108.1 million in new commitments to three new portfolio companies and 11 existing portfolio companies as add-on financing continues to be an important and highly attractive source of originations for us. Portfolio growth for the quarter was offset by 77.2 million in proceeds from eight debt prepayments which generated a weighted average realized IRR of 12.6%. On the capitalization front, we raised over 38 million in gross equity proceeds during the quarter through our equity ATM program at a weighted average price of $25.60 per share or 153% of the prevailing NAD per share. During the quarter, we also increased commitments under our STV credit facility by 50 million to 200 million. We have remained diligent in ensuring we have strong balance sheet liquidity while also funding a meaningful portion of our investment activity with a creative equity issue. We continue to maintain a conservative mindset to both BDC leverage and balance sheet liquidity. In fact, balance sheet liquidity at Capital Southwest is at an all-time high, which Michael will provide additional commentary on in a moment. Managing leverage to the lower end of our target range while ensuring strong balance sheet liquidity affords us the ability to continue to invest in new platform companies as well as provide financing for growth capital and add-on acquisitions for our existing portfolio companies. This is especially true in periods of volatile capital markets when risk adjusted returns can be particularly attractive. We also believe the strategy allows us to continue to grow our balance sheet while also maintaining the flexibility to opportunistically repurchase our stock if it were to trade meaningfully below NAD. On slide seven and eight, we illustrate our continued track record of producing steady dividend growth, consistent dividend coverage, and solid value creation since the launch of our credit strategy back in January 2015. Since that time, we have increased our quarterly regular dividend 29 times and have never cut the regular dividend, all while maintaining strong coverage of our regular dividend with pre-tax net investment income. In addition, over the same period, we have paid or declared 25 special or supplemental dividends totaling $4.01 per share, including the newly declared $0.06 per share supplemental dividend for the September quarter, all generated from excess earnings and realized gains from our investment portfolio. Dividend sustainability, strong credit performance, and continued access to capital from multiple capital sources are all core to our overall business strategy. Our track record in all these areas demonstrates the strength of our investment and capitalization management strategy, as well as the absolute alignment of all our decisions with the interest of our shareholders. Turning to slide nine, we lay out the core tenets of our investment strategy. Our core strategy is lending and investing in the lower middle market, the vast majority of which is in first lien and senior secured loans to companies backed by private equity firms. In fact, approximately 93% of our credit portfolio is backed by private equity firms, which provide important guidance and leadership to the portfolio company, as well as the potential for junior capital support, if needed. In the lower middle market, we often have the opportunity to invest on a minority basis in the equity of our portfolio company, how you pursue with the private equity firm, when we believe the equity thesis is compelling. As of the end of the quarter, our equity co-investment portfolio consisted of 69 investments with a total fair value of 133 million, representing 9% of our total portfolio at fair value. Our equity portfolio was marked at 134% of our costs, representing 33.8 million in indebted unrealized appreciation or 72 cents per share. Our equity portfolio continues to provide our shareholders participation in the attractive upside potential of these growing lower middle market businesses, which will come in the form of asset value appreciation, as well as equity distributions to capital Southwest over time. In fact, over the past 12 months, we have received 5.6 million in cash distributions from our equity portfolio, representing 13 cents per share in pre-tax NII. As illustrated on slide 10, our on balance sheet credit portfolio ended the quarter at 1.3 billion, representing year over year growth of 20%, or 1.1 billion at the end of June, 2023. In the current quarter, 100% of the new portfolio debt originations were first lien senior security, and as of the end of the quarter, 98% of the credit portfolio was first lien senior security. The weighted average exposure per company remains granular at 1%. We believe our portfolio granularity speaks to our continued investment discipline of maintaining a conservative posture to overall risk management as we grow our balance sheet. We expect that this metric will continue to improve as our asset base grows. I will now hand the call over to Josh to review more specifics of our investment activity, the market environment, and the performance of our portfolio for the quarter.

Thanks, Bowen. On slide 11, we detailed 108.1 million of capital invested in and committed to portfolio companies during the quarter. Capital committed during the quarter included 47.3 million in first lien senior security debt across three new portfolio companies, in which we also invested a total of 2 million in equity. In addition, we closed add-on financing for 11 existing portfolio companies consisting of 57.8 million in first lien senior security debt and 1 million in equity. We are pleased with the strong market position that our team has established in the lower middle market as a premier debt and equity capital provider. This is evidenced by the consistency of our origination activity and the broad array of relationships across the country from which our team is sourcing quality opportunities. As a point of reference, currently there are 73 different private equity firms represented across our investment portfolio. Since the launch of our credit strategy back in January 2015, we have completed transactions with over 100 private equity firms across the country, including over 27% with which we have completed multiple transactions. As Bowen mentioned, competition in the lower middle market has increased over the past six months, resulting in spreads tightening, particularly for high quality sponsor-backed opportunities. However, due to the depth and strength of our relationships our team has cultivated over the years, we continue to source and win opportunities with attractive risk return profiles. For many of the private equity sponsors we work with, they are looking for a lending partner, they know and trust. While we may not always be the cheapest financing option, our reputation for being dependable, thoughtful and constructive partners are key differentiators in winning deals. Turning to slide 12, we continued our track record of strong returns on our exits with eight debt prepayments during the quarter. In total, these exits generated $77.2 million in total proceeds, generating a weighted average IRR of 12.6%. During the quarter, all prepayment activity was a result of the robust financing market as all eight of these prepayments were refinancing rather than company sales. And six of the eight prepayments were companies with EBITDA north of $30 million. In fact, two of the companies, Intermedia and Vita, were large syndicated credits formerly held at I-45, which were paid off at par. I'll note that since the launch of our credit strategy, we have realized 82 portfolio company exits, representing over one billion in proceeds that have generated a cumulative weighted average IRR of 13.9%. On slide 13, we detailed key statistics for our portfolio as of the end of the quarter. The total portfolio fair value ended the quarter by a weight of .9% to first lien senior secured debt, .9% to second lien senior secured debt, .1% to subordinated debt, and .1% to equity co-invest. The credit portfolio had a weighted average yield of .3% and a weighted average leverage through our security of 3.8 times EBITDA. The decrease in our weighted average EBITDA across the portfolio for the quarter was driven entirely by the refinancing activity among the larger EBITDA companies in the portfolio. As run rate EBITDA in our portfolio continues to grow. Overall, we are quite pleased with the company performance across our portfolio. Cash flow coverage of debt service obligations across the portfolio remains at a healthy 3.3 times, despite the higher base rate environment. With our loans across our portfolio averaging 44% of the portfolio company enterprise value. Quarter over quarter revenue and EBITDA growth on a weighted average basis was 5% and 4% respectively. As seen on slide 14, our total investment portfolio continues to be broadly diversified across industries with an asset mix which provides strong security for our shareholders capital. Asset and industry diversification has been and always will be a core tenant of our investment strategy. We continually assess risk both on a company by company basis as well as on the overall portfolio. Having originated over 150 deals since we relaunched Capital Southwest as a middle market lender back in January 2015, we are able to leverage our experiences to assess our successes as well as the lessons learned across all industries. We believe that continually improving our institutional knowledge and underwriting processes is key to driving long-term value for our shareholders. On slide 15, we have laid out our ratings migration across our portfolio during the quarter. As a reminder, all loans upon origination are initially assigned an investment rating of two on a four point scale, with one being the highest rating and four being the lowest rating. We had three loans representing 17 million in fair value upgraded during the quarter, while having three loans representing approximately 35 million in fair value downgraded during the quarter. The portfolio remains healthy with .4% of the portfolio at fair value rated in one of the top two categories, a one or a two. I will now hand the call to Michael to review the specifics of our financial performance for the quarter. Thanks,

Josh. Specific to our performance for the quarter, as summarized on slide 16, pre-tax net investment income was $31.3 million, or 69 cents per share, as compared to $29.8 million, or 68 cents per share in the prior quarter. Net investment income after tax was $28.9 million, or 63 cents per share for the quarter. The main driver of the increased tax expense this quarter was 2.2 million in deferred taxes related to our taxable subsidiary, CSCI, which holds the majority of our equity investments. These deferred taxes relate to the current cumulative appreciation on our equity portfolio versus the portfolio's current tax basis and are not payable until we realize gains on portfolio company exits. Moreover, changes in the deferred taxes, positive or negative, do not impact our undistributed taxable income balance at Capital Southwest. During the quarter, we paid out a 57 cent per share regular dividend and a six cent per share supplemental dividend. As mentioned earlier, our board has declared an increase to the regular dividend to 58 cents per share and a supplemental dividend of six cents per share for the September quarter. Management and the board have spent significant time contemplating the impact of a lower interest rate environment on future earnings. Our belief, based on the earnings power of our investment portfolio through steady growth and improved operating leverage, is that increasing the regular dividend by a penny this quarter is in the best interest of our shareholders. We have consistently maintained that setting a regular dividend at a level that we believe will never be cut in any foreseeable interest rate environment is key to generating stable, attractive shareholder returns over the long term. We continued our strong track record of regular dividend coverage with 122% coverage for the 12 months ended June 30, 2024 and 111% cumulative coverage since the launch of our credit strategy in January 2015. As a reminder, our intent is to continue to distribute to our shareholders a portion of the excess of our quarterly pre-tax net investment income over our regular dividend and a quarterly supplemental dividend. We are confident in our ability to continue to distribute quarterly supplemental dividends for the foreseeable future based upon our current UTI balance of 50 cents per share, our ability to grow UTI each quarter organically by over earning our total dividend and the expectation that we will harvest gains over time from our existing 72 cents per share and unrealized appreciation on the equity portfolio. For the quarter, total investment income increased 11% to $51.4 million from $46.4 million in the prior quarter. The increase was driven primarily by a $3.1 million increase in cash interest income, as well as a $900,000 increase in the amendment and other fees quarter over quarter. As at the end of the quarter, our loans on non-accrual represented .9% of our investment portfolio at fair value and the weighted average yield in the portfolio on all investments was 13.5%. As seen on slide 17, LTM operating leverage ended the quarter at 1.8%, which was up slightly quarter over quarter due to some one-time expenses during the quarter. Our operating leverage of .8% continues to compare favorably to the BDC industry average of approximately 2.8%. We believe this metric speaks to the benefits of the internally managed BDC model and our absolute alignment with shareholders. The internally managed model has and will continue to produce real fixed cost leverage while also allowing for significant resources to be invested in people and infrastructure as we continue to build and manage a best in class BDC. As we look forward, we expect further improvements in operating leverage as we continue to grow our balance sheet over time. During slide 18, the company's NAV per share at the end of the quarter decreased by 17 cents per share to $16.60, representing a decrease of 1%. The primary drivers of the NAV per share decreased for the quarter were net unrealized appreciation on our investment portfolio and dilution from the annual issuance of restricted stock to employees, partially offset by accretion from the issuance of common stock at a premium to NAV per share. Turning to slide 19, we're pleased to report that our balance sheet liquidity is at an all-time high with approximately 485 million in cash and undrawn leverage commitments on our two credit facilities and our SBA debenture commitments, which altogether represented 3.1 times the 158 million of unfunded commitments that we had across our portfolio as of the end of the quarter. During the June quarter, commitments to the SPV credit facility increased to $200 million, up from 150 million in the prior quarter. In addition, based on the current borrowing base, we have access to the full 460 million in total commitments on the ING-led corporate credit facility. This facility has an inquiry and feature allowing for the further increase in total commitments up to an aggregate of 750 million, allowing us to continue to grow our revolver capacity in lockstep with the growth of our overall balance sheet. We're actively working to further increase commitments to the corporate credit facility and will provide updates on that process in the coming months. As a reminder, in March 2024, we submitted a MAC application to the SBA, which began the process towards a second SBIC license. We are actively working with the SBA and are hopeful to complete this process by the end of the calendar year at the latest. We look forward to providing updates on this process as they become available. Finally, as of the end of the June quarter, 49% of our capital structure liabilities were in unsecured covenant-free bonds with our earliest debt maturity in January, 2026. Our regulatory leverage, as seen on slide 20, ended the quarter at a debt to equity ratio of 0.75 to one, down from 0.82 to one as of the prior quarter. While our optimal target leverage continues to be in the 0.8 to 0.95 range, we are weighing the impacts of future base rate reductions and maintaining adequate cushion levels to allow us the flexibility to potentially increase leverage to support future earnings and dividend growth. We will continue to methodically and opportunistically raise secured and unsecured debt capital, as well as equity capital through our ATM program to ensure we maintain significant liquidity and conservative balance sheet leverage with adequate covenant cushions. From a capital markets perspective, DDCs have been very active in the unsecured debt market over the past few months as investors remain constructive on new bond issuances. Despite not having any maturities within our debt structure till 2026, we are actively evaluating financing transactions to mitigate future capital markets volatility while also being mindful of the current interest rate environment. I will now hand the call back to Bowen for some final comments.

Thank you, Michael, and thank you, Josh. And again, thank you everyone for joining us today. As always, we appreciate the opportunity to provide you with an update on our business, our portfolio and the market environment. Our company and portfolio continue to demonstrate strong performance and we continue to be impressed by the job our team is doing in building a robust asset-based deal origination and portfolio management capability as well as a flexible capital structure. We believe we have prepared our company well for future growth and performance. The overall health and security of our portfolio is strong. Our credit portfolio is predominantly made up of first-leaning senior secured loans allocated across a broad array of companies and industries, the vast majority of which are backed by private equity firms. Further, interest coverage of the debt obligations across our portfolio is a strong 3.3 times with significant equity cushion and support for our debt investments. Additionally, our equity co-investment portfolio gives our shareholders participation in the equity upside of many of these growing lower-bend market businesses, providing further enhancement to our long-term shareholder returns. Last but not least, we have a very well-capitalized balance sheet with multiple capital sources and balance sheet liquidity that is at an all-time high, all of which provides our company an exciting runway to continue to grow and generate strong shareholder returns for years to come. This concludes our prepared remarks, operator. We are now ready to open up the lines for Q&A.

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. And that first question comes from Mickey Sleend from Latimer, the Thalmann. Your line is not open.

Yes, good morning, everyone. Bowen, how would you characterize your interest in non-sponsored deals in the current market to help offset spread compression in the sponsored finance segment? And how would those deals compare to the sponsored deals in terms of the size of the portfolio company and the deal structure?

Yeah, we've always been, thanks, Mickey, we've always been open to non-sponsored deals and we have a few of

them in our portfolio. So we

know the space. It can be attractive. It's gonna, they tend to be, we would need them to be higher equity cushions, maybe

not lower. And we typically would experience slightly higher, although not always, but slightly higher yield compared to a funded sponsor and tighter credit documents.

So I'd say to answer the question, we're definitely open to it. We've been, our deal flow from the sponsored community has been

very strong. I mean, we've referenced the increased competition in the market. So this last quarter, we've lost a handful of deals, both on not being willing to lever the companies, what other lenders are and also pricing. And so, on the non-sponsored side, sure. We certainly have an appetite for it and we get calls for those. It

hasn't been a major focus of ours, but it's definitely a market that we understand and are open

to. The other thing, Mickey, I'd mentioned is that, when we look sort of a little bit higher level at what our yields look like and what our returns, required returns to grow the dividend, in the last 24 months, our average yield on our portfolio company, new platform companies was about seven and a half percent. And so over the last two quarters, that has come down to just south of 7%. But we still say that those spreads are robust. And so we're not probably in the market of looking for additional spread just because of the tightening in the near term. Because overall, when you look at the blended return and spreads, they're quite healthy across the board.

I appreciate that, Michael. And one follow-up question. Could you give me a sense of the average sofa floors in your debt investment portfolio?

All of our new deals have had, pretty much all of them had 2% floors.

But it's not a weighted average, it's about

one and a half percent.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm sorry, can you repeat that?

Sure, it was about one and a half percent across the total portfolio.

Okay, thanks for that. Those are all my questions, appreciate your time. And thank

you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Bryce Rowe from B Riley. Your line is now open.

Thanks a lot, good morning. Maybe, Bowen or even Chris, appreciate the details and the prepared remarks around kind of the repayment activity, especially calling out those that came out of the I-45 portfolio. Just kind of curious, how do you kind of size up or handicap the portfolio as it sits right now? I assume those refinance investments were kind of lower hanging fruit and more obvious and just kind of trying to think about what the potential for continued refinance activity might be.

Well, I think, I mean, we talked about this yesterday. I think what we've seen in the last quarter was maybe very

well a pull forward of a lot of repayment activity, very robust markets,

spreads are

wide, or spreads

are a lot of liquidity in the market,

a lot of refinancing activity, given the current volatility in the capital markets, you very well may see that kind of slow down a bit.

We've got one or two companies that are in sale processes, but we don't really have a lot of prepayments like staring us in the face right now. And so I would tell you that I would expect prepayment activity in the near term, maybe even the intermediate term versus what it was last quarter to slow down a bit. I would say for this

quarter specifically, I expect it to be somewhere in the 20 to $30 million this quarter. And to Bo's point, I think that the information we're getting is that some of the portfolio companies will look to have exits sometime in mid 2025 or the end of 2025. So we might have a little bit of a reprieve and having seen so many happen just this quarter. Okay,

that's helpful. And then any commentary around the more elevated dividend income for the quarter, should we consider that to be more one time?

Yeah, so this quarter we had about 1.4 million of the dividend income were from dividend recaps. So obviously that's gonna be one time in nature, but there was another almost 600,000 of recurring dividends coming off of our equity portfolio. And we have seen that, we have somewhere between a half a million and $2 million equity investments. And many of these companies do produce some level of dividend income on a quarterly basis. Okay,

that's helpful, Michael. And then last one for you, Michael, in terms of maybe a comp guide for us, we've had some volatility in the compensation expense lines so just any thoughts around that would be super helpful.

Yes, so this quarter we saw a total comp at 4.7 million, which I would tell you was high with some one time expenses. So I would say the run rate is around 4.3 million on a quarterly basis. And I'd also tell you that for GNA, we had a number of one time expenses this quarter, it being our proxy and shareholder meeting quarter, as well as having a comp study done every two years for management and the board. The run rate for GNA should be something more like two and a half million. So total, the 7.6 total expenses for SGNAs really should be around 6.8 on a go for basis. Okay, awesome, thank you so

much. And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Sean Paul Adams from Raymond James, your line is now open.

Good morning.

On the downgrades and the risk ratings in the portfolio, last quarter we had touched on kind of the watch list, trending positively with turnaround potential in some of the non-accruals within the portfolio. Given the relative downgrades of a couple companies to level three and four, going from .3% last quarter to now 6, I mean 7.6, has there been any incremental pressure among previously

low risk holdings within the portfolio? So as a watch list as a group,

I think the watch list as a group has improved slightly. The two new, we had no new non-accruals this quarter. The two downgrades to three, so from a two down to a three rating, both of those companies are private equity backed, and in both cases the private equity firm has put a meaningful amount of money in those firms, in those companies. They've each got kind of more of an idiosyncratic story. One of them is referencing slight soft consumer demand or softer consumer demand, which is interesting. But they're both being backed by the private equity firm with meaningful capital, which obviously means that private equity firm thinks that there's a turnaround and

some upside from where they put money in, right?

And then the downgrade to a four is a situation that we opted not to participate in a liquidity

round just because we felt like it was, at this point where we sit, too high of a potential of being good money after bad. And so we downgraded it to a four, and we'll just kind of see what happens going forward, small for us, but that's kind of that story. So it's more in the pharmaceutical services space. Another capital did come in to support that deal.

So there is definitely value

there. They definitely had capital coming in to support it

on a prining basis in that case. And so that's why we downgraded it, and we did not participate.

So, but other than those, the watch list group, the watch list is improved consistently. Got it, got it.

Turning over to kind of your thoughts on leverage levels and whether or not you guys are overlaying that with the Ford curve, which has really moved around quite a bit, I think we're looking at like a 100 bips reduction in the three months over by January. To what extent are your thoughts around the shifting, the leverage dependent on these changes in the curve, or what are your general thoughts operating with those two in tandem?

So, I mean, I think we said in earlier remarks that we have made the decision from a corporate perspective to de-lever, knowing that with rates coming down, we're expecting, and anybody's guess on this, but eight cuts over the next 18 months, which is obviously gonna put pressure on earnings. Seeing how our portfolio is pretty robust now, we're able to create strong earnings, staying unlevered at the moment while we have significant liquidity is gonna allow us to pick up investments as things kind of get difficult and if we're chopping the market, we'll be able to originate when others might be pulling back and we'll be able to continue to lever up also modestly and improve earnings in there for the dividend. So that's sort of the thought process looking ahead.

Got it, got it. So more of a wait and see and wait until the forward curve stabilizes more before you deploy or you guys just looking for any opportunities that come up from now to stabilization.

Let me clarify, you asking about our portfolio company investments or you asking about the BDC corporate leverage?

The BDC corporate leverage.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, well, I would also make mention, we've increased the dividend this quarter and the reason we did that, we had held it flat for several quarters because we were taking a wait and see approach to the rate environment and because rates did stay higher for longer, we were able to build out the portfolio, drop our operating leverage, which gave us further confidence that where the low point might be, if and when the rate cycle bottoms out, which might be obviously in the low to mid threes or somewhere in that area.

Got it, thank you, I appreciate the call.

And

thank

you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Doug Harder from UBS. Your line is now open.

Hi, this is actually Corey Johnson, the one for Doug. You mentioned that competition has increased and that spreads have tightened. Can you talk about what you see as possibly, other lenders maybe giving up in the market in terms of possibly covenants in order to be able to win deals? Is the quality of these covenants as strong as they were previously?

Yeah, so first of all, in general matter, we have not really seen any meaningful

deterioration in covenants in our new deals. Covenants go up, covenants go down slightly with a pretty tight band in the lower middle market. I think you may be getting it. When we lose deals, generally it's most often because we tell a sponsor we'll put a certain leverage level and a lot of times that might be lower than the sponsor's asking for and then another lender comes over the top and offers them exactly what they want. And so I would say in the last couple of quarters, as Josh touched on, spreads have tightened and so we've lost more deals as a percentage of our lost deals on pricing than we would typically see. So pricing has definitely tightened. And so we're kind of just doing what we did. I mean, we're risk managers, credit managers and we have to make judgment calls on the risk adjusted returns and pricing of risk on a deal.

And

so we're continuing to do the same thing, adjust the market when it tightens up and we've been doing this a long time, on 20 something years. Competition comes and competition

goes, spreads tighten and then spreads widen. I would tell you my experience is rates tend to fall, spreads tend to widen and as market

volatility increases, spreads tend to widen. So we'll see what the future holds, but that's hopefully give you a taste of what the competitive environment looks like.

And the other thing to point out is we are the lower middle market. And so when you talk about covenants, the covenants are there. I mean, you'll see that as 100% of our deals will have strong covenants. It's not like this indicated market where you'll see strong add backs or covenants being dropped or no covenants at all. So the lower middle market is gonna be very consistent in that way. So just echoing Bowen's comments, but making sure that you understand that that'll be consistent in our business plan.

Great, thank you.

And thank you. And I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Bowen Deal for final remarks.

Thanks operator

and thanks everybody for joining us. We appreciate your time and always love telling you about the performance of our business. And we look forward to talking to you next quarter.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.