Gladstone Investment Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Gladstone Investment Second Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during a conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, David Gladstone, Chief Executive Officer. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Well, thank you, LaTanya. That was a very nice introduction, and good morning to all of you that are listening in. This is David Gladstone, Chairman at Gladstone Investment. This is the second quarter ending. That's for the fiscal year that ends March 31, 2023. And we're ending the quarter at September 30, 2022, to talk to you about. All the shareholders and analysts that are on, hopefully you're all ready to ask us lots of good questions when we get to that part of it. And we are talking about the symbol GAIN as well as two others. GAIN is the common stock, and GAINN and GAINZ is for the registered notes and things that we've listed as well. So thank you for calling in. We're always happy to provide updates to shareholders and analysts who are on the phone call. And there are two goals here to help you understand what happened in the last quarter and also to give you a current view of the future. Now we'll start out with our general counsel, as we always do, Michael LaCousie. Michael.

Thanks, David. Good morning, everybody. Today's call may include forward-looking statements under the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. including those regarding future performance. Now, these forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties and other factors, even though they're based on our current plans, which we believe to be reasonable. Now, many factors may cause our actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements, including all risk factors listed in our Forms 10Q, 10K, and other documents we file with the SEC. You can find them on the Investors page of our website. That's www.gladstoneinvestment.com. or the SEC's website, which is www.sec.gov. And we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. Please also note that any past performance or market information is not a guarantee of any future results. We ask that you take the opportunity to visit our website, once again, gladstoneinvestment.com, sign up for our email notification service, You can also find us on Twitter, at Gladstone Comps, and on Facebook, keyword the Gladstone Companies. Today's call is simply an overview of our results through 9-30-22, so we ask that you review our press release and 10-Q, both issued yesterday, for more detailed information. With that, I'll turn it over to Gladstone Investments President, Dave Dullam. Dave Dullam.

Dave Dullam. Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. Welcome. Again, we're pleased to report that GAIN had another good quarter for fiscal year 23, and This follows on the previous solid first quarter of the fiscal year. We clearly are in a challenging period with rising interest rates and inflationary costs. However, our portfolio companies, we're happy to say, are meeting these challenges. And as a result, we ended the second quarter of fiscal year 23, which was on 9-30-22, with adjusted NII of $0.29 per share and total investments at fair value of $738 million. which is up from $690 million at 6-30-22. Our deal activity this quarter was fairly good as we made one new acquisition and investing $39 million. We also invested $30 million and recapitalized one of our existing portfolio companies. Now, in connection with this investment, we received a return of our preferred equity investment of $10 million. We received dividend and success fee income of $4.8 million and recognized a realized gain of $2.2 million, thereby increasing our debt investment in that company when the dust settled to $57.7 million. So again, we were able to generate capital gains, fee income, and indeed increase our actual investment in this portfolio company. I should note that we will have opportunity for recapitalizations from time to time. Now, these are positive events. as they generally allow us to generate capital gains and other income while increasing our investment in a company where clearly we know the management team and the business, so it's a good opportunity. With the buyout market still frothy, meaning relatively expensive and pretty competitive, this is a good way for us to create value within the portfolio and therefore reward shareholders. Now, subsequent to the quarter end, we invested an additional $8.4 million to fund an add-on acquisition to one of our portfolio companies. Also, subsequent to the quarter end, we announced a 6.7% increase in our monthly dividend to 8 cents per share, excuse me, up from 7.5 cents per share for a new annual run rate of 96 cents per share. Additionally, we declared a supplemental distribution of 12 cents per share, which will be paid in December of 2022. We currently anticipate being able to fund future supplemental distributions, and this comes as we recognize realized gains, excuse me, realized cap gains on the equity portion of future exits and potentially from other recapitalizations that we might do. Our buyout focus strategy continues to successfully generate both income from monthly distributions to shareholders and capital gains on equity for supplemental distributions. Now, we did experience a small decline in valuations in the aggregate across our portfolio. And this was primarily as a result of declining valuation multiples, even though we had increases in EBITDA in many of our portfolio companies. Our balance sheet continues to be strong, low leverage, and a very positive liquidity position with significant availability in our credit facility. And you'll hear a lot more about this from Rachel Easton, our CFO. This allows us to continue providing support to our portfolio companies for add-on acquisitions, and interim financing if the need arises, while actively seeking new buyout opportunities and growing our assets. So looking forward, even though there does seem to be some moderation in the multiples being used to determine the values of buyouts, the market is still very competitive with deal flow being strong and significant liquidity in buyout funds, of course, who is our competition. We will remain patient and selective in our due diligence and review process, while aggressively seeking new acquisitions and implementing recapitalizations with existing portfolio companies as appropriate. Well, that lets you know that the new acquisition effort is very important and is a high priority for us. So in summing up the quarter and looking forward, we believe the state of our portfolio is very good. We have a strong and liquid balance sheet, an active level of buyout activity, and continued prospect of good earnings and distributions over the next year. So, Rachel, will you tell us a little bit more detail about all of that?

Absolutely. Thanks, Daniel. Good morning. I'll start with a summary of the fund's operating performance for the quarter ended September 30th, 2022. In the second quarter of fiscal year 23, we generated adjusted net investment income of $9.7 million, or $0.29 per share. This was up from $8.3 million, or $0.25 per share, in the prior quarter. We continue to believe that adjusted net investment income, which is net investment income exclusive of any capital gains-based incentive fees, is a useful and representative indicator of ongoing operations. The increase in adjusted NII was driven by an increase in total investment income to $20.8 million compared to $19.3 million in the prior quarter, as well as a decrease in net expenses to $9.4 million from $11.9 million in the prior quarter. The $1.5 million increase we saw in total investment income was primarily due to an increase in debt investments in the current quarter, as well as an increase in LIBOR impacting our interest rates. Additionally, driving the increase in interest income, we had one portfolio company that was previously on non-accrual come back on accrual status this quarter. Going forward, there are two portfolio companies that remain on non-accrual status, and we will continue working with those companies to get back on accrual status if possible. The $2.5 million decrease in net expenses we experienced was primarily driven by a decrease in accrued capital gains-based incentives. This is due to the net impact of realized and unrealized gains and losses as required under U.S. GAAP. We believe that maintaining liquidity and flexibility to support and grow our portfolio are key elements of our success. We have long-term capital in place, and at 9-30-2022, had $163.4 million available on our $180 million credit facility. Additionally, we raised approximately half a million dollars in net proceeds under our new common stock ATM program, all sales of which were above NAV. Overall, our leverage is low, with an asset coverage ratio at 9-30-2022 of 254.1%. Our NAV per share declined during the quarter to $13.31 per share at 9.30. This is compared to $13.44 per share in the prior quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by $10.6 million of net unrealized depreciation and $7.5 million of distributions paid to common shareholders. These amounts were partially offset by $11.4 million of net investment income and $2.3 million of realized gains on investments. Consistent with prior quarters, our distributable book earnings to shareholders remain strong. With that in mind, and as previously announced, in October 2022, our board of directors increased our monthly distribution run rate to 96 cents per share per year and declared a 12 cents per share supplemental distribution to be paid in December of this year. Using the new monthly distribution run rate of 96 cents per share per year and the 24 cents per share in supplemental distributions paid and declared so far for the year, Noting that this may not actually be indicative of what ultimately may be declared for the year, our fiscal year distributions would total $1.20 per common share or a yield of about 9.2% using yesterday's closing price of $12.99. This covers my part of today's call. Back to you, David.

Oh, thank you. Very nice, Rachel. It was very nice for Dave and Michael as well. We've given good information to our shareholders. This call in the 10-Q filed with the SEC yesterday should bring everyone up to date on the company. The team has reported solid results for the quarter, and we believe the team is in a great position to continue these successes through the remainder of our fiscal year in March 31, 2023. I'm telling you, getting over 9% yield on the price of the stock these days Very strong return. Hope all of you call your broker and get some shares. We believe that Gladstone investment is an attractive investment, and we're seeking continuous monthly distributions, supplemental distributions from potential capital gains and other income. The team hopes to continue to show you strong returns for your investment, and we'll take good care of your money. As you know, most of us, here at the company have a lot of shares in this company as well as the other funds. So now I'm going to stop and we'll ask our analyst friends and maybe some shareholders to ask us some questions and we'll do our best to give you a good answer.

Thank you. We will now conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your lines in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Once again, that's star one at this time. One moment while we pose for our first question. Our first question comes from Mickey Schwing with Lattenberg-Dalman. Please proceed.

Good morning, everyone. Dave, I wanted to ask you about how business owners are behaving in terms of their willingness to perhaps sell their businesses when we think about, you know, the headwind of rising interest rates for them and the headwinds also from a potential recession? In other words, is that driving them to have more interest in selling and providing you perhaps a bigger pipeline than you have in the past?

Hey, Mickey, good morning. Thanks for that question. I can't honestly tell you that we're seeing that. I would say that there has been probably a bit of a slowdown in a pure family-owned or controlled business, somewhat to that degree. Obviously, there are other variables such as, you know, what sort of succession there is. And what we're finding, and we've had a few situations like this where you start getting into diligence and, you know, the values come down. when you really get into it. And as a result of that, actually the sellers then will back off and not move forward. So to your point, there is a bit of that where they'd love to try to sell it, but if it's not at a value, they'd rather stick with it and so on. So I wouldn't say that that's really helping improve the deal flow in that regard. And then the other, obviously, seller group would be other private equity firms, frankly, and they're more looking to, if they're at the point where they need to exit, they're going to exit sort of regardless. But having said all of that, as I mentioned, there's still enough demand, if you will, and capital that is still keeping some of those valuations at a higher value than, frankly, we think we can support. So net-net, it's a struggle.

Okay. I appreciate that, Dave. You know, your portfolio sort of includes many companies that are, you know, fundamental businesses focused on the U.S. economy. So I think it'd be really interesting to understand, or if you could just give some sense of how their revenues are developing and their margins as well, given all this tightening that the Fed is doing.

So I would say we're starting to Just feel a little bit of a slowdown. As you know, we have what I think of as three sort of categories. I don't call them necessarily industries, but categories, manufacturing, business services, and, you know, especially consumer services. We're starting to see a little bit of a slowdown, I would say, on the demand side. On the consumer side, manufacturing, that's slowing a little bit also. And then on the business services side, that's actually pretty robust right now. The bigger challenge continues to be, in certain categories, finding labor, even though we know that there are folks that are not looking for jobs frankly, which I think impacts the way in which we think of unemployment. But having said that, the bigger challenge really is more around good quality labor. Prices and labor prices seem to be moderating a bit, and obviously supply chain struggles are improving also. We've seen clearly the cost for argument's sake of importing from, say, China or the Far East, where you were dealing with container costs that were $15,000 to $20,000 back not but six months ago. Now those are back more normal, kind of in the $5,000 to $7,000 per container type of cost. And that impacts clearly those companies that we have that are importing. So we're seeing improvement there. So across the board, I would say it's starting to slow a little bit, but nothing dramatic in that regard.

And, Dave, when you think about all those comments you just made, and look at the forward interest rate curves, what level of concern do you have regarding your company's ability to fund their debt service in terms of cash interest coverage ratios and their ability to absorb what looks like going to be meaningfully higher interest rates over the next couple of quarters?

Right. So currently, as you know, the way our deals are structured, you know, with a LIBOR plus and on floors, we've been always pretty much in the category where we're above the floors. We are at our floors, if you will. And so now with LIBOR increasing, we're starting to see a bit of an increase over and above what they've been paying. because our floors, so to speak, have been relatively high, I would say, because as you know, the yield on our total portfolio is 11.9, 12 percentage. So we're not seeing as big an impact right now. The other thing, obviously, which, you know, as you well know, because of the way in which we own these companies and the way in which we capitalize these companies, we have a little bit of flexibility. If we were needing to give our companies some some help so to speak and you know in a in a deferral or slight reduction as things really got tight which we've had to do in the past from time to time uh but right now we're not seeing that to be a a big problem with any of our portfolio companies we obviously have two that have been on non-accrual for a while one that actually came off of non-accrual which is a very good thing And the two that are currently on non-accrual, as Rachel said, you know, we're working hard with those companies. I think one of them, very good chance it will sometime in the next six to nine months could come off non-accrual. The other one, not so sure. But that's not a huge, frankly, driver to affect our results going forward.

I appreciate that, Dave. A couple last questions, more housekeeping sort of questions. The portfolio's weighted average yield climbed only 20 basis points, but during that period, LIBOR increased 150 basis points. You just talked about LIBOR floors. Were your LIBOR floors so high that that accounts for that change, or is there something else that I should understand?

So you're right there. Our floors are generally around 2% to 3% across the portfolio. So, you know, I think as LIBOR continues to increase this quarter, we should see that yield lift as well.

Okay. So your floors are higher than what's typical in the middle market. And my last question is just your view on balance sheet leverage or, you know, what sort of level of debt to equity are you comfortable with in the current market environment?

You know, right now we're at about 250%, and I think that's a level that we are comfortable with. We have, we're at current about $20 million out on our line of credit. So, you know, I think we have a lot of room there. But, you know, we look at it holistically as at our business and our capital structure. And, you know, we were conservative in our leverage metrics, and I don't think we're looking to change that.

Yeah, and obviously, as we look forward and start, you know, hopefully we'll be making some new acquisitions this year. We have the capacity. That's the good news, as Rachel's pointing out. In terms of where we would start to be a little nervous, call it around the leverage ratio, I would say if we start to get in the kind of 180% sort of range is probably where we start to look at it. As you know, we put in an ATM program earlier this year in common stock, and we were raising

you know, not aggressively, but we were raising until, of course, prices started moving down for everybody.

So we're clearly, we're slowly back to about NAV. We're a little bit below NAV. So we're certainly not going to raise any common, you know, certainly at this level. As we go forward, as prices hopefully would start, you know, stock prices move back up, we'll, you know, gradually add some equity to the balance sheet as we look forward and sort of match it with new acquisitions that we're making. But right now, as Rachel said, to reinforce that, we're in really good shape right now. And we think as we look forward, even with some pretty good new acquisitions, we'll be in decent shape, both from a leverage perspective and from a capital perspective, probably up through halfway of next year thereabouts. That would be my thinking.

Okay. That's it for me this morning. I appreciate your time as always. Thank you. Thanks, Mickey.

Thank you.

So next question.

Once again, to ask a question, please press star 1. Our next question comes from Kyle Joseph with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Hey, good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. Just curious on your commentary regarding things remaining competitive in the middle market in terms of buyouts. What would be the outlook for you if rates continue to rise? Do you ultimately see some competitive disruptions there. And then in terms of capital allocation priorities, our add-on acquisition is kind of the near-term focus for you guys.

Yeah. Hey, Kyle. Good to talk to you. So add-ons, yes. We've been making some of those. As we mentioned this past quarter, we added on to one of our portfolio companies, and we're continuing to grow that business. We're aggressively looking for add-ons. That's a good way for us to do it. As I mentioned, recapitalizations with some of the companies that are That's another good way for us to do it. In terms of the competitiveness, though, what we're starting to see is as rates rise where the impact there clearly is around for the traditional private equity funds, meaning our competition, the leverage that they're being made available for them is certainly declining a little bit, we think. In other words, it's getting tougher for them to get leverage, forget the rate even, So that should thereby mean that we're more competitive because we bring our own leverage with us, and it's a total package. We're seeing some of that, but having said that, what we're also seeing is private equity firms, frankly, just being more aggressive on the equity. So in other words, they're less leverage, putting more equity in the deal, and presumably thinking that down the road they'll be able to lay that off in some regards. So the short answer would be it's still a struggle, it's still competitive, and we're not going to pay some of the multiples that we're seeing because it really doesn't work for our model and it's not the right way to go. So we'll keep being patient, and I think we'll do a good job this year, but it's going to take us a while to make the kind of acquisitions we'd like to make.

Got it. Very helpful. Thanks for answering my questions. Next question, please.

There are no further questions in queue at this time, Mr. Glassstone, so if you have any closing comments for the group.

Well, that's sad. We like good questions, so we're missing out on this one. We'll have to wait until next quarter in order to hear some really strong questions hopefully next time. That's the end of this. Thank you all for tuning in.

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference webcast. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a great day.