Prospect Capital Corporation

Good morning and welcome to Prospect Capital Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Release and Conference 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 your telephone keypad. 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 John Barry, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jordan. Joining me on the call today are Greer Isaac, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Kristen Van Dask, our Chief Financial Officer. Kristen.

Thank you, John. This call is the property of Prospect. Unauthorized use is prohibited. This call contains forward-looking statements that are intended to be subject to safe harbor protection. Actual developments and results are highly likely to vary materially, and we do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements unless required by law. For additional disclosure, see our earnings press release and 10-Q filed previously and available on our website, prospectstreet.com. Now I'll turn the call back over to John.

Thank you, Kristen. In the March quarter, our net investment income, or NII, was $102.2 million, or basic NII of 21 cents per common share, exceeding our distribution rate per common share by 3 cents. Our basic NII coverage of our common distribution is now 117 percent. Our annualized basic NII yield is 8.9 percent on a book basis and 13.2 percent based on our May 8th stock price close. Prospects 92.1 percent interest income as a percent of total investment income in March 2023 was at the highest level since September 2020, demonstrating prospects' strong recurring revenue model. Our basic net income net loss applicable to common shareholders was $108.9 million, or 27 cents per common share. Our NAV stood at $9.48 per common share in March, down 46 cents and 4.6% from the prior quarter, largely due to unrealized mark-to-market depreciation. Since inception in 2004, Prospect has invested $20 billion across 414 investments, exiting 278 of those investments. On the cash shareholder distribution front, we are pleased to report the Board's declaration of continued steady monthly distributions. We are announcing monthly cash common payments shareholder distributions of six cents per share for each of May, June, July, and August. These four months represent the 69th, 70th, 71st, and 72nd consecutive six cents per share cash distributions. Consistent with past practice, we plan on announcing our next set of shareholder distributions in August. Since our IPO 19 years ago through our August 2023 distribution, at the current share count, we will have paid $20.28 per common share to original shareholders, representing 2.1 times March common NAV and aggregating over $3.96 billion in cumulative distributions to all common shareholders. Since October 2017, our NII per common share, less preferred dividends, has aggregated $4.40, while our common shareholder distributions per common share have aggregated $3.96. with our NII exceeding distributions during this period by 44 cents per common share. $166 million of excess NII representing 111% coverage. We're also pleased to announce continued preferred shareholder distributions following successful launches of our $2 billion non-traded preferred programs and $150 million listed preferred. We've raised over $1.5 billion in preferred stock to date with strong support from institutional investors, RIAs, and broker-dealers, including the addition of two top five sized independent broker-dealer systems, as well as top wirehouses and regional broker-dealer systems. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Greer.

Thank you, John. Our scale platform with over $8.4 billion of assets and undrawn credit at Prospect Capital Corporation continues to deliver solid performance in the current dynamic environment. Our experienced team consists of over 100 professionals, representing one of the largest middle market investment groups in the industry. With our scale, longevity, experience, and deep bench, we continue to focus on a diversified investment strategy that spans third-party private equity sponsor-related lending, direct non-sponsor lending, prospect-sponsored operating and financial buyouts, structured credit, and real estate yield investing. Consistent with past cycles, we expect during the next downturn to see an increase in secondary opportunities, coupled with wider spread primary opportunities with a pullback from other investment groups, particularly highly leveraged ones. Unlike many other groups, we have maintained and continue to maintain significant dry powder and low leverage that we expect will enable us to capitalize on such attractive opportunities as they arise. This diversity of origination approaches allows us to source a broad range and high volume of opportunities, then select in a disciplined, bottoms-up manner the opportunities we deem to be the most attractive on a risk-adjusted basis. Our team typically evaluates thousands of opportunities annually and invests in a disciplined manner in a low single-digit percentage of such opportunities. Our non-bank structure gives us the flexibility to invest in multiple levels of the corporate capital stack with a preference for secured lending and senior loans. Consistent with our investment strategy, our secured lending and first lien mix has continued to increase. As of March, our portfolio at fair value comprise 54.4 percent first lien debt, up 1.4 percent from the prior quarter, 17.6 percent second lien debt, down 0.9 percent from the prior quarter, 9.2 percent subordinated structured notes with underlying secured first lien collateral, up 0.2 percent from the prior quarter, and 18.8 percent unsecured debt and equity investments, down 0.7 percent from the prior quarter. resulting in 81.2 percent of our investments being assets with underlying secured debt benefiting from borrower-pledged collateral. That's up 0.7 percent from the prior quarter. Prospect's approach is one that generates attractive risk-adjusted yields. In our performing interest-bearing investments, we're generating an annualized yield of 13.4 percent as of March, an increase of 0.5 percentage points from the prior quarter as we continue to benefit from increases in short-term rates. We also hold equity positions in certain investments that can act as yield enhancers or capital gains contributors as such positions generate distributions. We've continued to prioritize senior and secure debt with our originations to protect against downside risk while still achieving above-market yields. through credit selection discipline and a differentiated origination approach. As of March, we held 127 portfolio companies, down three from the prior quarter with a fair value of $7.6 billion, a decrease of approximately $178 million. We also continue to invest in a diversified fashion across many different portfolio company industries with a preference for avoiding cyclicality, and with no significant industry concentration. The largest is 18 percent. As of March, our asset concentration in the energy industry stood at 1.7 percent, hotel, restaurant, leisure sector, 0.3 percent, and retail, 0.4 percent. Non-accruals as a percentage of total assets stood at approximately 0.2 percent in March 2023, down 0.3 percent from the prior quarter and down 0.7 percent from June of 2020. Our weighted average middle market portfolio net leverage stood at 5.3 times EBITDA, which is substantially below our reporting peers. Our weighted average EBITDA per portfolio company stood at $114 million. Originations in the March quarter aggregated $92 million. We also experienced $114 million of repayments and exits as a validation of our capital preservation objective, resulting in net repayments of $22 million as we continue to take a cautious approach toward new credit underwriting given macroeconomic conditions. During the March quarter, our originations comprised 42.8 percent middle market lending and buyouts, 30.4% real estate, and 26.1% middle market lending. To date, we've deployed significant capital in the real estate arena through our private REIT strategy, largely focused on multifamily workforce stabilized yield acquisitions. And in the past year, an expansion into senior living. With attractive in-place 5- to 12-year financing opportunities, To date, we have acquired $3.8 billion in 105 properties across multifamily, 81 properties, student housing, eight properties, self-storage, 12 properties, and senior living, four properties. In the current higher financing cost environment, we're focusing on preferred structures with significant third-party capital support underneath our investment attachment points. NPRC, or private REIT, has real estate properties that have benefited over the last several years and more recently from rising rents, showing the inflation hedge nature of this business segment, strong occupancies, high collections, suburban work-from-home dynamics, high returning value-added renovation programs, and attractive financing recapitalizations, resulting in an increase in cash yields as a validation of this income growth business alongside our corporate credit businesses. NPRC, as of March, and not including partially exited deals where we have received back more than our capital invested from distributions and recapitalizations, has exited completely 45 properties at an average net realized IRR to NPRC of 25.2 percent and an average realized cash multiple of invested capital of 2.5 times. with an objective to redeploy capital into new property acquisitions, including with repeat property manager relationships. Our structured credit business has delivered attractive cash yields, demonstrating the benefits of pursuing majority stakes, working with world-class management teams, providing strong collateral underwriting through primary issuance, and focusing on favorable risk-adjusted opportunities. As of March, we held $698 million across 35 non-recourse subordinated structured notes investments. We maintained a relatively static size for our subordinated structured notes portfolio on a dollar basis, electing to grow our other investment strategies, and resulting in the structured notes portfolio now comprising less than 10 percent of our investment portfolio. These underlying structured credit portfolios comprise more than 1,600 loans. In the March quarter, this portfolio generated a gap yield of 13.8 percent, down 1.1 percent from the prior quarter. As of March, our current subordinated structured credit portfolio has generated $1.43 billion in cumulative cash distributions to us, representing around 110 percent of our original investment. Through March, we've also exited 13 investments with an average realized IRR of 13.7 percent and cash-on-cash multiple of 1.39 times. Our subordinate structured credit portfolio consists entirely of majority-owned positions. Such positions can enjoy significant benefits compared to minority holdings in the same tranche. In many cases, we receive fee rebates because of our majority position. As majority holder, we control the ability to call a transaction in our sole discretion in the future, and we believe such options add substantial value to our portfolio. We have the option of waiting years to call a transaction in an optimal fashion rather than when loan asset valuations might be temporarily low. We as majority investor can refinance liabilities on more advantageous terms, remove bond baskets in exchange for better terms from debt investors in the deal, and extend or reset the investment period to enhance value. We've completed 32 of these refinancings and resets since December of 2017. So far in the current June 2023 quarter, across our overall business, we've booked $136 million in originations and experienced $27 million of repayments for $109 million of net originations. Our originations have consisted of 51.5% middle market lending, 34.5% real estate, and 14% middle market lending and buyouts. Thank you. I'll now turn the call over to Kristen. Kristen?

Thanks, Greer. We believe our prudent leverage, diversified access to matched book funding, substantial majority of unencumbered assets, wading toward unsecured fixed-rate debt, avoidance of unfunded asset commitments, and lack of near-term maturities demonstrate both balance sheet strength as well as substantial liquidity to capitalize on attractive opportunities. Our company has locked in a ladder of liabilities extending 29 years into the future. Our total unfunded eligible commitments to non-control portfolio companies totals approximately $53 million, representing approximately 0.7% of our assets. Our combined balance sheet cash and undrawn revolving credit facility commitments currently stand at approximately $864 million. We are a leader and innovator in our marketplace. We were the first company in our industry to issue a convertible bond, develop a notes program, issue under a bond and equity ATM, acquire another BDC, and many other lists of firsts. In 2020, we also added our programmatic perpetual preferred issuance to that list of firsts, followed in 2021 by our listed perpetual preferred as another first in the industry. Shareholders and unsecured creditors alike should appreciate the thoughtful approach differentiated in our industry, which we have taken toward construction of the right-hand side of the balance sheet. As of March 2023, we held over $5.1 billion of our assets as unencumbered assets, representing over 66% of our portfolio. The remaining assets are pledged to Prospect Capital Funding, a non-recourse SPV, where in September 2022, we completed an upsizing and extension of our revolver to a refreshed five-year maturity. We currently have $1.78 billion of commitments from 51 banks an increase of nine lenders from August 2022, and demonstrating strong support of our company from the lender community with the diversity unmatched by any other company in our industry. Shortly after the well-publicized bank failures in March, we added two new banks and upsized an existing bank within our credit facility. The facility revolves until September 2026, followed by a year of amortization with interest distributions continuing to be allowed to us. Our drawn pricing is now SOFR plus 2.05%. Of our floating rate assets, 94% have LIBOR or SOFR floors with a weighted average floor of 1.21%. Short-term rates have now exceeded these floors, giving us the benefit of increased asset yields from Fed rate hikes. Outside of our revolver and benefiting from our unencumbered assets, we've issued at Prospect Capital Corporation, including in the past few years, multiple types of investment-grade unsecured debt, including convertible bonds, institutional bonds, baby bonds, and program notes. All of these types of unsecured debt have no financial covenants, no asset restrictions, and no cross defaults with our revolver. We enjoy an investment grade BBB minus rating from S&P, an investment grade BAA3 rating from Moody's, an investment grade BBB minus rating from Kroll, an investment grade BBB rating from Egan Jones, and an investment grade BBB low rating from DBRS. In 2021, we received the latter investment grade rating, taking us to five investment grade ratings more than any other company in our industry. All of these ratings have stable outlooks. We've now tapped the unsecured term debt market on multiple occasions to ladder our maturities and to extend our liability duration out 29 years. Our debt maturities extend through 2052. With so many banks and debt investors across so many unsecured and non-recourse debt tranches, we've substantially reduced our counterparty risk over the years. In the March 2023 quarter, we have continued utilizing our low-cost revolving credit with an incremental 6.71% cost. We also have continued with our weekly programmatic internodes issuance on an efficient funding basis. To date, we have raised over $1.5 billion in aggregate issuance of our perpetual preferred stock across our preferred programs and listed preferred, including $138 million in the March 2023 quarter and $53 million to date in the current June 2023 quarter, with the ability potentially to upsize such programs based on significant balance sheet capacity. We now have five separate unsecured debt issuances, aggregating $1.2 billion, not including our program notes, with maturities extending through October 2028. As of March 2023, we had $355 million of program notes outstanding with staggered maturities through March 2052. At March 31st, 2023, our weighted average cost of unsecured debt financing was 4.07%, a decrease of 0.26% from December 31st, 2022, and a decrease of 0.28% from March 31st, 2022. In 2020, we added a shareholder loyalty benefit to our dividend reinvestment plan, or DRIP, that allows for a 5% discount to the market price for DRIP participants. As many brokerage firms either do not make DRIPs automatic or have their own synthetic DRIPs with no such 5% discount benefit, we encourage any shareholder interested in DRIP participation to contact your broker. Make sure to specify you wish to participate in the Prospect Capital Corporation DRIP plan through DTC at a 5% discount and obtain confirmation of same from your broker. Our preferred holders can also elect to drip at a price per share of $25. Now, I'll turn the call back over to John.

Thank you. We can now take any questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will momentarily assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Sean Adams with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good morning. My only question is, do you guys have any realized gains in the pipeline such as about incremental earnings for the quarters looking forward? Hey, Greer, why don't you take that?

Sure.

Well, the realized gain would be based in the future on a future – A realization hasn't happened yet. So if we're, quote, in the pipeline, it would already have an executed agreement with maybe a closing pending same. I'm not aware of any in that category right now, but over the years in our equity-oriented book we call middle market lending and buyouts, Our realizations have generated around a mid-30s percent IRR across all of our capital. That includes debt as well as equity. And then within our real estate business, although the flows work a little bit differently coming back to Prospect Capital Corporation, but within NPRC, those IRRs, as just discussed, in our prepared remarks, have been in the mid-20s. So we've actually, over the last year or two, been spending more time prioritizing deals. They tend to be a little bit smaller than our average portfolio company with an EBITDA of over $110 million. So more in the middle market or even lower middle market, we've been evaluating equity-linked deals where we can purchase equity, not necessarily majority equity, but also minority equity. Legere and RK Logistics are two deals that come to mind that we've closed in the last year and a half. We've also been active with add-on acquisitions for our platform deals in that particular segment of our portfolio. It's been a frothy M&A market, as we know, for quite some time until recently. And many buyers or previously competing buyers are sitting more on their hands, hesitant to act or have financing costs that are perhaps prohibitively expensive. Because we bring our own financing to bear with these investments, we have a bit more flexibility and flexibility in general would expect that sort of one-stop buyout or equity-linked business to have more, not fewer, opportunities when markets get more seized up, when there are economic downturns, et cetera. So we think the future is promising that particular segment that, again, we're prioritizing. But nothing imminent, I would say, comes to mind for realization.

Any answer to that, John?

Thank you very much.

Well, I have nothing to add, so how about the next question?

There are no more questions at this time. This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to John Berry for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful day. Bye now.

Thank you all. Bye.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.