Chicago Atlantic BDC, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Chicago Atlantic BDC Quarter 3 2025 Earnings Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tripp Sullivan of IR. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to the Chicago Atlantic BDC conference call to review the company's results. On the call today will be Peter Sack, Chief Executive Officer, Tom Jeffrey, Interim Chief Financial Officer, and Dino Colonna, President. Our results were released this morning in our earnings press release, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website and in our supplemental earnings presentation followed with SEC. A live audio webcast of this call is being made available today. For those who listened to the replay of this webcast, we remind you that the remarks made herein are as of today and will not be updated subsequent to this call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements that are not based on historical facts made during this call, including any statements related to financial guidance, may be deemed forward-looking statements under federal securities laws because such statements involve known and unknown risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. We encourage you to refer to our most recent SEC filings for information on some of these risk factors. Chicago Atlantic BDC assumes no obligation or responsibility to update any forward-looking statements. Please note that the information reported on this call speaks only as of today, November 13, 2025. Therefore, you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay or transcript reading. And now I'll turn the call over to Peter Sack. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chip. Good morning, everyone. During the third quarter, the results continued to demonstrate that Chicago Atlantic BDC is a uniquely positioned BDC with the experience and expertise to capture above-market returns while protecting principal. We remain the only BDC focused on and able to lend to cannabis companies, together with a focus on the lower middle market, commonly underserved by capital providers. We believe that this differentiation provides uncorrelated distinct credit opportunities. Net investment income per share was $0.42 for the third quarter of 2025, demonstrating the potential of the business model to generate a 12.5% yield to book value. For the third quarter, we were excited to announce that we executed on our pipeline and funded $66.7 million to 13 new investments, of which seven were new borrowers, which improved diversification of the portfolio and allowed us to utilize our credit facility. I'm proud to say that's a new originations record for us. I believe we're all familiar with the issues that are arising in the broader private credit markets. Borrowers defaulting, interest rate sensitivity, dividend coverage, and in some cases outright fraud. With our company seeming to trade as if these issues apply to us equally as well, it's worth pointing out some specifics when we say Chicago Atlantic is a differentiated BDC. The public BDC industry data points that I'm about to mention are taken from Oppenheimer's Equity Research Industry Update as of August 20, 2025, except for the average yield, which was taken from Raymond James BDC Weekly Insights as of October 3, 2025. Our weighted average yield on debt investments as of September 30, 2025 was 15.8%, compared to 11.4% for the average BDC. 99.5% of our portfolio is senior secured, compared to other BDCs who have an average of 19.5% exposure to subordinated debt, equity, and JV investments. The balance of fixed to floating interest rates of the portfolio has improved, with 31% of the debt portfolio fixed and 69% floating, better positioning the company against a drop in interest rates. We calculate that 100 basis point drop in rates only impacts 17% of the portfolio, which demonstrates the impact of high interest rate floors. Our unique investment strategy is focused on underserved markets, providing no overlap in investments made by any other public BDC that we are aware of. We conduct full due diligence on new credits ourselves instead of relying on underwriting conducted by banks or co-investors, and we carefully monitor the performance of each of our companies ourselves. The portfolio is under levered with only $11 million of debt as of quarter end compared with the BDC average of 1.2 times debt to equity. Assuming full utilization of our $100 million credit facility during the year, we would still be well below industry averages. Lastly, we have no non-accruals compared with an industry average of 3.5% of cost. Today, we announced a $0.34 dividend marking the fifth consecutive quarter at that rate. This dividend is also well covered this quarter with net investment income per share of 42 cents. As we continue executing our strategy, we will focus on further diversifying the portfolio, utilizing the credit facility, and managing interest rate sensitivity while maintaining the overall strength of the portfolio. Now I'll turn it over to Tom to discuss the numbers in greater detail.