Portman Ridge Finance Corporation

good day and thank you for standing by welcome to the portman ridge third quarter 2021 financial results conference call at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode after the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session to ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 on your telephone please be advised that today's conference is being recorded if you require any further assistance please press star zero i would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today G. Hay Lindford, a representative of the company. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Portman Ridge Finance Corporation's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. An earnings press release was distributed yesterday, November 4th, after market closed. A copy of the press release, along with an earnings presentation, is available on the company's website at www.portmanridge.com in the investor relations section and should be reviewed in conjunction with the company's form 10Q filed yesterday with the SEC. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. Please note that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements which are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors including those described in the company's filings with the SEC. Portman Ridge Finance Corporation assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements unless required by law. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Ted Goldthorpe, Chief Executive Officer of Portman Ridge. Please go ahead, Ted.

Thank you. Good morning, and thanks, everyone, for joining our third quarter earnings call. I'm joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Jason Ruse, and our Chief Investment Officer, Patrick Schaefer. I'll provide brief highlights on the company's performance and activities this quarter. Patrick will provide commentary on our investment portfolio and our markets, and Jason will discuss our operating results and financial condition in greater detail. Yesterday afternoon, Portman Ridge announced its third quarter 2021 results. We reported overall a solid quarter in which we generated strong earnings, well covered our distribution, and increased our net asset value. Origination was robust this quarter, and we're beginning to see more evidence of the strength of the BC Partners platform in generating attractive risk-adjusted opportunities. Of note, we completed a one for 10 reverse stock split effective August 26th, 2021, and so all metrics discussed will reflect that split. For the third quarter of 2021, we generated NII of $1.50 per share. NAV per share as of quarter end was $29.71, an increase of 43 cents, or 1.5%, compared to a NAV per share of 29.28 in the prior quarter, reflecting broad-based improvements in our debt portfolio and joint ventures. On the corporate front, we've previously spoken about our intent to leverage fixed costs of a growing asset base and generate cost efficiencies over time. Last quarter, we issued 108 million in 4-7-8 senior unsecured notes and used the proceeds to redeem the full 76.7 million of 6-8 notes in the third quarter. We also redeemed in full 28.75 million of the HCAP 6-8 notes that were assumed as part of the HCAP transaction. As a result, In the third quarter, we generated interest savings driven by a lower weighted average cost of debt. Furthermore, we maintained other operating expenses at a relatively stable level quarter to quarter and believe the impact of these savings will continue to materialize over time as we continue to grow and reposition our portfolio to higher quality and higher yielding BC Partners originated assets. In additional corporate news, last quarter we indicated that following a period of restrictions related to ongoing M&A activity, we were able to resume our share buyback program by the end of the second quarter. We've continued participating in our repurchase program, and as a result, during the third quarter, we repurchased a total of 1.4 million shares. Our expectation is to continue to conduct buybacks under the program throughout the remainder of the year based on market conditions and other factors.