This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk00: Welcome to Portman Ridge Finance Corporation's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. An earnings press release was distributed yesterday, August 9th, after market close. A copy of the 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 Forms 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. Speaking on today's call will be Ted Goldthorpe, Chief Executive Officer, President and Director of Portman Ridge Finance Corporation, Jason Roos, Chief Financial Officer, and Patrick Sheffer, Chief Investment Officer. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Ted Goldthorpe, Chief Executive Officer of Portman Rich.
spk07: Good morning, and thanks everyone for joining our second quarter 2023 earnings call. I'm joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Jason Roos, and our Chief Investment Officer, Patrick Schaefer. I'll provide brief highlights on the company's performance and activities for the 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, Portman Ridge announced its second quarter 2023 results, and continuing off the back of strong earnings momentum seen in the first quarter of 2023, we are pleased to announce a solid financial performance for Portman Ridge in both the second quarter of 2023 and the first half of 2023 overall. Our total investment income core investment income and net investment income substantially increased as compared to the three-month and six-month period of last year, as we continue to see the impact of rising rates have had in generating incremental revenues from our debt portfolio. Our core investment income for the second quarter of 2023 was $19.2 million, an increase of $5.5 million as compared to $13.7 million for the second quarter of 2022. Our strong performance this past quarter has allowed us to maintain our dividend of 69 cents per share, marking a 6 cents per share distribution increase as compared to the third quarter of 2022. In terms of a market update, M&A and deal activity picked up during the second quarter, particularly in the back half and early third quarter, despite the continued macro overhang of elevated inflation rates and continued increases in the Fed funds rate. While we continue to see lender-friendly concessions on pricing and terms, the competitive dynamics are stronger than we've seen in several quarters. We remain very selective regarding new portfolio companies, given the broader macroeconomic environment, but have found particularly attractive opportunities for add-on investments in existing portfolio companies looking to compete tuck-in acquisitions. Turning the focus back to the company, we continue to believe in the valuation of Portman Ridge as we continued repurchasing shares under a renewed stock purchase program. In Q2 of 2023, we repurchased an incremental 27,801 shares, following on the trend seen throughout 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. We expect this trend of repurchasing Portman shares to continue throughout 2023 as we are able to do so. On this call, Patrick will also walk through the potential upside cases for our net asset value but as it pertains to the current quarter performance, approximately 72% of our net losses in the investment portfolio were driven by our CLO equity positions. While this continues to be a challenging asset class given certain structural issues with the syndicated loan market, CLO equity represents less than 3% of our total assets. Approximately 74% of our portfolio is in first-line debt and is now valued at a meaningful discount to par. If you've experienced normalized defaults or even elevated defaults, default rates versus history, we believe there's still embedded net asset value upside in our portfolio. Thus, this adds to our earnings momentum, driven by wider spreads and new origination and rising short-term interest rates to drive both potential NAV and earnings upside. With that, I will turn the call over to Patrick Schaefer, our Chief Investment Officer, for a review of our investment activity.
spk08: Thanks, Ted. Turn to slide five of our earnings presentation and the sensitivity of our earnings to interest rates. As of June 30, 2023, approximately 90.9% of our debt securities portfolio were either floating rate with a spread to an interest rate index such as LIBOR, SOFR, or PRIME rate, with 69% of these being linked to SOFR. As you can see from the chart, the underlying benchmark rate of our assets during the quarter lagged the prevailing market rates and still remains meaningfully below the LIBOR and SOFR rates as of July 25, 2023. We expect this to normalize over time as the underlying one, three, and six-month contracts reset. For lesser purposes, if all of our assets were to reset to either a three-month LIBOR or SOFR rate, respectively, we would expect to generate an incremental $484,000 of quarterly income. While our liability costs will also rise relative to their Q2 levels, we still expect a net positive benefit of approximately $0.04 per share, assuming all of our assets and liabilities are utilizing the same three-month benchmark rate for an entire quarter, which is further illustrated on slide seven. Skipping down to slide 11, both investment activity and originations for the quarter were slightly higher than prior quarter, resulting in net repayment and sales of approximately $21.0 million. Net deployments consisted of new fundings of approximately $15.3 million, offset by approximately $36.3 million of repayments and sales. These new investments are expected to yield a spread to SOFR of 828 basis points on the PAR balance, and the investments were purchased at a cost of approximately 98.65% of PAR, which will generate incremental income to the stated spread. As mentioned during our earnings call, it was our expectation that Q2 would generate more repayments than deployments, as we intentionally drew up a portion of our revolver in Q4 2022 to invest ahead of several repayments. In May, we repaid $23.6 million of our 2018-2 secured notes. I would like to specifically call out two payments paydowns during the quarter, both of which occurred relatively early on. First, we completed the recalibration of Northeast Metalworks, an asset acquired as part of the merger with Harvest Capital in April 2023. As part of the transaction, we were repaid approximately one-third of our position and restructured the remaining position prioritize additional periodic repayments. Secondly, in mid-May, we will refinance out of our second lien terminal position in TechTech, which has been a portfolio company since the initial externalization transaction back in April 2019. In addition to being one of our larger positions, it was by far our largest second lien position and allows us to further rotate into first lien senior secured loans. During the quarter, we funded $600,000 into our Great Lakes joint venture, which has taken us close to being fully funded under that commitment. Similar to our experience with new assets on the balance sheet, incremental investments in our Great Lakes joint venture have come at increasing spreads and widening OID, which should result in higher returns going forward. Our investment securities portfolio at the end of the second quarter remained highly diversified with investments spread across 27 different industries and 104 different entities, all while maintaining an average par balance per entity of approximately $3.2 million. Turning to slide 12, we had one new issuer and two incremental portfolio company investments going on accrual as compared to March 31, 2023, one of which is a term loan for Qualtech, which is valued at 53.82% of par and has recently emerged from bankruptcy, from which we are looking to recover a portion of our initial investments. the second of which is a term loan for Lucky Bucks, which is valued at 28.2% of par. In aggregate, investments on non-accrual status remain relatively low at seven investments in the second quarter of 2023 as compared to five investments on non-accrual status as of March 31, 2023. These seven investments on non-accrual status at the end of the second quarter of 2023 represent 0.8% and 2.6% of the company's portfolio at fair value and amortized cost, respectively. On slide 13, as Ted mentioned, if we focus on the top three rows of the table and exclude our non-accrual investments, we have an aggregate debt securities fair value of $410.6 million, of which represents a blended price of 92.18% of par and is 88% comprised of first lien loans at par value. Assuming a par recovery, our June 31, 2023 fair values reflect a potential of $34.8 million of incremental NAV. a 16.2% increase or $3.65 per share, excluding any recovery on the non-accrual investments. For lesser purposes, if you were to assume a 10% default rate and 70% recovery on this debt portfolio, there would still be an incremental $2.25 per share of NAB value or a 10% increase over time as the portfolio matures and is repaid, again, excluding any recovery on the non-accrual investments. This default rate is above anything the market is expecting or has experienced historically. Turning finally to slide 14, if you aggregate these three portfolios, over the last three years, we have repurchased a combined $434.8 million of investments, have realized over 73 percent of these positions at a combined realized and unrealized mark of 102 percent of fair value, at the time of closing the respective mergers. We were able to achieve these results despite the global pandemic in 2020 and most of 2021, and a weak market for almost all asset classes in 2022. In a similar vein as the previous slide, as of June 30, 2023, there remains an incremental $12.8 million of value as compared to par in these portfolios, which equates to $9.4 million, or a 4.4% increase, when applying a similar 10 percent default rate and 70 percent recovery analysis, and excluding non-accrual investments. And I'll turn the call over to Jason to further discuss our financial results for the period.
spk05: Jason Gildea- Thanks, Patrick. As both Ted and Patrick previously mentioned, despite operating under a challenging economic environment, our results for second quarter of 2023 reflect strong financial performance. Our total investment income increased by $4.6 million to $19.6 million in the second quarter of 2023 in comparison to $15 million in the second quarter of 2022 as we continue to see the impact of rising rates on our portfolio. This reported total investment income represents a $700,000 decrease from the $20.3 million of reported total investment income in the first quarter of 2023. The quarter-over-quarter decrease was largely due to reduced payment-in-kind income seen in the second quarter when compared to the first quarter of 2023, as well as lower paydown income and lower purchase accretion as the discount associated with investments acquired through mergers and acquisitions continues to run off. Excluding the impact of purchase price accounting, our core investment income for the second quarter of 2023 was $19.2 million, an increase of $5.5 million as compared to $13.7 million for the second quarter of 2022, and a decrease of $100,000 as compared to $19.3 million for the first quarter of 2023. Our net investment income for the second quarter of 2023 was $7.9 million, an increase of $2.4 million as compared to $5.5 million for the second quarter of 2022, and a decrease of $600,000 as compared to $8.5 million for the first quarter of 2023. The quarter-over-quarter decrease was largely due to the aforementioned decreases seen in payment-in-kind income, pay-down income, and purchase discount accretion. For the six months ended June 30, 2023, our NII was $16.4 million, an increase of $3 million as compared to $13.4 million in the same six-month period from 2022. As of June 30, 2023 and March 31, 2023, the weighted average contractual interest rate on our interest-earning debt securities was approximately 12.1%, and 11.7% respectively. We believe the portfolio continues to be well positioned in a rising rate environment to generate incremental revenue in future quarters. Total expenses were relatively flat quarter over quarter at $11.7 million for the second quarter of 2023 as compared to total expenses of $11.8 million seen in the first quarter of 2023. This quarter-over-quarter decrease highlights our efforts at continuing to reduce overall expenses in certain areas, such as administrative services, professional fees, and other general and administrative costs. Our net asset value for the second quarter of 2023 was $215 million, or $22.54 per share, as compared to $225.1 million, or $23.56 per share, in the first quarter of 2023. A significant driver of the quarter-over-quarter decline is attributable to realized losses from impairment taken against our CLO equity positions, as well as markdowns on that portfolio. On the liability side of the balance sheet, as of June 30, 2023, we had a total of $333.7 million par value of borrowings outstanding, comprised of $78 million in borrowings under our revolving credit facility, $108 million of 4.78% notes due 2026, and $147.7 million in secured notes due 2029. This balance represents a quarter-over-quarter decrease of $24.6 million, driven by a $23.6 million repayment on the secured notes due 2029. As of the end of the quarter, we had $37 million of available borrowing capacity under the senior secured revolving credit facility and no remaining borrowing capacity under the 2018-2 revolving credit facility as the reinvestment period ended shortly after our draw on November 20, 2022. As of June 30, 2023, our debt-to-equity ratio was 1.6 times on a gross basis and 1.4 times on a net basis. From a regulatory perspective, our asset coverage ratio at quarter end was 163%. Lastly, and as announced yesterday, a quarterly distribution of 69 cents per share was approved by the board and declared payable on August 31, 2023, to stockholders of record at the close of business on August 22, 2023. This is a six cents per share distribution increase as compared to the third quarter of 2022. Including the distribution subsequent to the announcement of full year 2022 earnings results, total stockholder distributions for 2023 amount to $2.06 per share. With that, I will turn the call back over to Ted.
spk07: Thank you, Jason. Ahead of questions, I'd like to reemphasize that we believe we are well positioned to take advantage of opportunities that arise from the current market environment by continuing to be selective and resourceful in our investment decision making. Overall, we believe we remain situated to continue to deliver attractive returns to our shareholders throughout the second half of 2023, as we have demonstrated in the first half of 2023. Thank you once again to all our shareholders for your ongoing support. This concludes our prepared remarks, and I'll now turn the call over to the operator for any questions.
spk00: Thank you. The floor is now open for your questions. To ask a question this time, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from Christopher Nolan with Leidenberg Tallman. Your line is open.
spk02: Hey, guys. Hey, guys. Did the Asuri purchases have any accretion to NAV per share? And if so, can you quantify it?
spk05: Yeah, we bought about, what, $500,000, about $500,000 worth of equity in the quarter. I think if you look at it six months to date, I think it's about $0.37 a NAV, roughly.
spk02: Also, were there any non-recurring items in EPS?
spk05: Yeah, I would say on the expense side, there's probably about, well, I know there is, there's about $100,000 of non-recurring or one-times legal expense and the professional expenses. Other than that, you know, our, you know, other income fees are generally kind of one-times in nature, but do have a recurring effect, you know, quarter over quarter, it's generally pretty somewhat volatile, but there's always some fee income that we see in that line, I would say. It trended up this quarter from last quarter due to some one-times items in there, about $300,000, $400,000 roughly.
spk02: Great. And then I guess finally, I'm seeing for the BECs I cover, incremental asset quality deterioration. Strategically, do you see the developing environment to be conducive to more consolidation in the BDC space?
spk07: Oh, that's not where I thought you're going with that question. I would say, I think a lot of the low hanging fruit has been picked, I think, in terms of M&A. But, you know, again, scale is becoming more and more and more important across broad credit. And you're seeing like, you know, both in terms of getting financing from banks, which is becoming more scarce, and and also in servicing our clients appropriately. So scale is definitely important. I don't see any near-term M&A, but it is a good question. It's something we're always looking for, and obviously we always get phone calls on M&A opportunities.
spk02: Sounds good.
spk04: I'll get back in the queue. Thanks, guys.
spk03: Thank you.
spk00: Our next question comes from Ryan Lynch with KBW. Your line is open.
spk01: Good morning. First question, I want to, hey, first is just clarification. Did you say 72% of the realized losses, which was kind of reflecting the, you know, the, you know, six to seven million of losses was related to the CLO positions, or was that 72% of realized and unrealized losses.
spk05: Yeah, hey Ryan. So, of the 6.7 realized, about 5.6 of that was related to the CLOs. Okay.
spk01: And then, so, a couple questions on that then. So, what drove the decline in, I guess, CLOs? Because that wasn't offset by realized gains or unrealized gains. I guess when you sold those... What kind of drove the lower valuations in your CLO book? Because it didn't seem like all these syndicated loan prices really moved lower in the quarter. In fact, they were up.
spk05: Yeah, let me clarify that a little bit, Ryan. So the CLO did have about $900,000 in unrealized. That flipped into realized as part of that 5.6 that I just mentioned. And the remainder of that, well, all of the 5.6 was unrealized. flipped into realized as part of an impairment. So we reduced the cost basis of the instrument. It wasn't a sale of the positions. And that's driven by basically the accounting and the fair value based on the future cash flow expectations of that CLO equity. And I'll pass it to Patrick.
spk08: Yeah, having said all that, there is still a – again, despite whether you consider it unrealized versus – whether we took it as an impairment versus remains unrealized – there were some, we'll call it fair value declines in the CLO portfolio. And by and large, your point, the syndicated market hasn't moved very much. But what we've seen, you know, honestly this quarter for the first time in a while, and we can talk about other reasons why, but a lot of the CLO managers themselves are actually selling some of the assets within the portfolio, sometimes to meet certain tests, sometimes for other reasons. But given that most of our CLO managers the CLO vehicles that we're invested in are out of the reinvestment period. You know, if you sell an asset at 90, that's just a hit relative to NAV. And so what we saw particularly, again, it's across a number of the, we have, I guess, three different managers in total between our CLOs. And by and large, the majority of the, call it, markdown or decline in fair value is from the managers themselves selling assets at, you know, below par.
spk07: So, Ryan, thematically what's happening, which obviously is incredibly frustrating, is the way CLOs are set up, obviously they manage to test. And you've obviously had ratings migration down or things on downgrade watch. And so, yeah, as Patrick said, a lot of it is portfolio repositioning around downgrades. And obviously that hurts the valuation of the CLO equity. So, I mean, I guess the only silver lining is it's only 2.5% of our remaining portfolio.
spk01: Yep. Okay. Makes sense. And then I guess on the other portion then, so that kind of covers I think a lot of the realized losses, but there were still some unrealized losses in the quarter as well as some realized that was outside of the CLOs. What What drove those declines? I know there were, I think you said, two new non-accruals. I haven't been able to calculate it. Were those driven by markdowns in the two new non-accruals, or what was kind of the overriding factors for the other write-downs in the portfolio?
spk08: Yeah, I'd say there's probably a little bit from the non-accruals, but I'd say the bigger impact, probably about half of, call it the non-CLO impact, is from one position. It's called MOVAX. It's a mark-to-market decline. We... continue to work with the company and the lender group. And, you know, we feel pretty decent that that markdown quarter over quarter is really just temporary. And we would, you know, anticipate that sort of reversing itself in the kind of near to medium term. So that's kind of about half of the mark is really just what we would very much characterize mark to market. And probably most of the rest of the other half is due to two other positions. One is called Anthem Sports Entertainment. It's just a large position, and we marked it down two or three points, sort of kind of consistent with sort of mark-to-market. Again, it's not a significant markdown on a percentage basis, but it's a relatively large position, so it has kind of an outsized dollar impact. And then the third one is HDC or Hostway. The company has been underperforming a little bit. They are in the process of selling a number of assets online. various different assets within the port within the company that we'd expect to realize a decent chunk of that of that loan in the kind of near to medium term and the remainder of it will kind of continue on so again you know I think we feel relatively good that that most of that of that markdown is temporary or or caught mark to market as opposed to as opposed to credit necessarily
spk07: And then one of them on the non accrual side, it is two new securities, but it's only one new issuer. And, and one of those issuers is expected to emerge from bankruptcy, or it's emerged from bankruptcy. So that'll also the non accrual, the non accrual line should also be stable to positive, barring some some surprises. So I'd say, thematically, credit quality in the portfolio, despite Patrick's comments is pretty stable, actually. And again, we don't expect a big spike in non-accruals going forward.
spk01: Okay. Well, kind of on that point, and when you were talking about kind of host sway and then the potential recovery for there, you guys talked about some potential upside to NAV if some of your senior loans that aren't on non-accrual status today are kind of recovered or even ran through a scenario where there was, you know, X percentage of defaults and certain recoveries. I guess, what do you think changes in the environment before those start getting written up, or is it just a very slow sort of accretion? If those companies continue to perform, kind of lay that down as the foundation, is it just going to be, do you think, a slow accretion over time as they get closer to maturity and repay, which could obviously take years? Or does something have to happen in broader in the market regarding spreads or something like that? Or what do you see as the potential catalyst or timeframe to eventually recover those potential write-downs?
spk07: Yeah, so I think we think there's a lot of embedded upside in the book because of this mark-to-market phenomenon. And the way our matrix works in terms of markdowns, there's a bit of a lag. So obviously today, as we sit here today, you know, obviously the loan and high-yield market have tightened, you know, recently. So some of that will just be mark-to-market based on indices. And then the number two is obviously a lot of it is driven by activity levels. So activity levels have been really, really muted this year. Like, you know, repayments are really low. But we are seeing, you know, pickup at M&A and a pickup in activity levels. And so some of it is just, you know, these companies get sold. There's a huge pull-the-par effect. I mean, one thing that's affecting us is, generally speaking, is some companies are doing these small incrementals, and these small incrementals are pricing wide to where the existing debt stacks are. So even though there's no credit issue, it reprices not only the first lane, but it reprices the second lane preferred. It reprices the whole capital structure. And so when companies go out and do these small little add-ons, that also could have a pretty big impact on quote-unquote mark-to-market, even though there's no credit issue. So we've seen that in a couple names where we're marked at a pretty big discount to par, but there's no credit issue, and it's generating really good yields. So, I mean, the answer to your question is a mixture of all of them. Like, A, there's a pull-to-par effect just for maturities, and we don't have a lot of long-term maturities given their loans. Number two is tightening of the market, which we've seen a little bit of that happen over the last couple months. And number three is, you know, they're correlated because if the market starts tightening, people can obviously get things done easier and therefore activity levels should pick up M&A-wise, and there you get some pops on valuations when things get taken out.
spk01: Yeah, okay. I understand. I know we're obviously talking about the future, which is incredibly hard to, you know, nobody can predict, but I appreciate the comment on that. One other last question that actually just came up as I was kind of thinking about your previous comments on the CLOs. I want to circle back to the discussion on the CLOs and the write-downs. I know it's a very small percentage of your portfolio at this point, especially with the most recent markdowns, but the sort of trend that happened in the second quarter of maybe having to move some stuff around because of maybe some downgrades or things like that and having to sell at losses, is there any reason to expect that that would stop in the third quarter, or is there another risk – potential for continued write-downs? And again, I know it's a smaller portfolio, but could we continue to see that in the third quarter write-downs from the CLOs?
spk07: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, the short answer to your question is, like, I don't know. Like, it feels like a lot of that repositioning was done in the first half of the year, and obviously people are feeling much, much better about the economy and all that. So there's been way less ratings movements recently, but obviously ratings are a lagging indicator. So I don't have a great answer for your question. We think we're marked very conservatively on those, and obviously we took a big right down this quarter. But it's hard to – to be honest with you, it's hard to know because we're not the manager of those couple securities, right? So I don't want to say something that turns out to be wrong because we just don't know.
spk01: That's fair. That's totally fair. Okay. That's all for me. I appreciate the time today.
spk07: Thank you so much.
spk00: Next question comes from Steven Martin with Slater. Your line is open.
spk06: Hi, guys. Steven. A couple of my questions have been asked and answered. Of your portfolio, the public – the debt, the senior portion of your portfolio, what would you bet the average mark is?
spk08: Yeah, I mean, it's somewhere in, I'd say the total is probably representative of the senior portfolio, which is somewhere in the low 90s, 91 to 93 cents of par, give or take. I think our portfolio as a whole is 91 spot six or 91 spot seven. I don't think the I think the senior loan versus the second lien is significantly different. Again, senior loans make up 75% of the total portfolio and a high 80% of the debt portfolio. So you could probably think of that as a pretty comparable number in terms of representing the first lien portfolio as a whole.
spk06: So that's why you say that there's a lot of accretion opportunity or NAV recovery in the senior portion of the portfolio. Correct.
spk08: In the portfolio as a whole, obviously it's significantly weighted towards senior, and that's how we call that out specifically because as we're thinking about default rates and recovery rates, obviously recovery rates would be much higher in senior positions as opposed to junior positions.
spk06: Okay. The non-performings, you know, you have the chart, which I love, of the acquisitions you've done and how those portfolios have realized. realized and unrealized. Of the non-performings, how many of them are B.C. partner, B.C. originated versus sort of old purchased portfolio positions?
spk08: Yeah, the short answer is only one is a B.C., is a B.C. originated asset, and the rest of them, the remaining, I guess we're talking about six issuers or six portfolio companies, so the remaining five are various different kind of legacy, call it, positions. Or at a minimum, we're in the book before we took over, and that would include going all the way back to the KCAP externalization. We'll call it five of six borrowers are, again, between KCAP and these acquisitions. We'll call it legacy. We don't like to use that word, but call it legacy.
spk06: Okay. And when you underwrote those acquisitions, are these surprises and are these bad outcomes versus what you underwrote, or is this where you had already, you know, it was part of your purchase accounting?
spk08: Yeah, good question. Honestly, I would need to look at them all individually. I do think a decent amount of the six, my hunch is, so of the six, again, let's just go back, of the six, two are, Again, they're like kind of, I'll call them like not real accruals. Their one is $75,000 note that we converted a equity position to a senior note. It was never on accrual in the first place. It never had any fair value. So that really, again, in my perspective, that's not really a credit issue whatsoever. So that drops you down to call it five portfolio companies One is a $500,000 remaining of a position from the original K-Cap that was already marked at 50-something cents when we took over. It was on non-accrual when we took it over. There's a very small piece that we've been waiting to get sort of flushed out of a state bankruptcy process. It's been in this process for, I don't know, like four years or so. So that brings you down to four. One of them is a B.C. portfolio company. That brings you down to three. I think two of the remaining three were on non-accrual at the time we took it over. So maybe call it one was a surprise versus the five that we sort of took over in terms of our underwriting.
spk06: Okay. Ted, what is the prospect? And you've talked about the third quarter a little. We're only halfway through. What's the prospect for deployment versus repayment in the third quarter?
spk07: I would say... We continue to see good opportunities to deploy, although the market is getting a little, like literally in a very, very, like over the last like three weeks, the market has gotten tighter for the first time in probably four quarters. And then repayments continue to be muted. Like I would say, you know, we're getting some one-off payments, but I would say repayment activity, we haven't seen a big pickup, you know, as compared to average.
spk08: I think the only additional thing I would add to Ted's comment is, we did like the tech tech repayment was in sort of the middle of May, which was a relatively chunky position. It was almost $13 million. So as we kind of think about deployment, that cash is sort of in the system waiting to be deployed and just the way that our market works, the private deals tend to have a bit of a lead time. So you could expect even all else being equal, that $12 million to be sort of redeployed into various different investments that perhaps were not on the books as of, June 30th. Yeah.
spk07: Then, I mean, not to state the obvious tech tech was a second lien. And so we can recycle that into comparably yielding first planes and you obviously get better advance rates on your, so it's a, are we accretive payoff? Let's put it that way.
spk06: Right. But would you expect if, if repayments are muted, would you expect to deploy a 10 million this quarter, 20 million, 30 million? Is there some sort of guesstimate you have?
spk08: I'd say probably more in the 10 to 20 range, probably not the 30 range, but I'd say more in the, again, just pure deployments, probably more in the 10 to 20 million dollar range.
spk06: Okay. And one last one. You've, for the last, at least the last two or three quarters, you've out-earned your NII as far exceeded your dividend rate. And I know this is a question I've that you sort of expect. What's the prospect for either a dividend increase or some form of special between now and the end of the year, or do we have to wait until after December?
spk07: No, I think here's the challenge with the dividend policy is obviously we're way over in our dividend. The challenge we have is the way we do our dividend is the forward curve for rates. When we set our dividend last quarter, was down like 200 basis points in the next two years. And obviously, this higher for longer, you know, the market's getting more comfortable with higher for longer. So that two-year-out curve actually has gone up a lot. So we always want to make sure our dividend's protected around cuts and short-term rates. And we have a huge cushion for that. And number two is we're going to have to reprice some of our CLO debt on our balance sheet, right, which is going to be a bit of an increase. So all that stuff means that if we take a big, big hit on short-term rates and we have to reprice all of our on-balance sheet CLO debt, we can still easily cover our dividend. So, yeah, we'll revisit it next quarter. We revisit it every single quarter. It's just hard when short-term rates forward are moving around as much as they have been. So the answer is we will revisit our dividend again. in our November meeting.
spk06: Yeah, because the year-over-year has been a nice percentage increase up until now. But last year in the third quarter, you upped the dividend. So if you don't up the dividend, your year-over-year is pretty flat. One other question on the CLOs. If you guys think that the CLOs are realizing losses, or the outside manager CLOs are realizing losses that you don't think are warranted, are you allowed to go buy those securities from them at that discount?
spk08: I mean, there's... I put it this way, Steve. There's nothing that would prevent us from doing it other than they don't necessarily tell us when they're going to sell stuff and what they're going to sell. So it would be very challenging to sort of line that up. But conceptually, we could. I mean, again, we could call them up and say, hey, before you sell anything in these vehicles, call us, which we could do. But they don't give us a heads up as they're in the process of selling things and what they're going to sell. So it's tough for us to have advance warning of their plans.
spk06: Got it. And guys, for the future, no more CLOs. Unless you're going to self-manage them so you can control them. All right. I'll talk to you guys later. Thanks, Steve.
spk00: Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Another question comes in from Christopher Nolan with Leidenberg Thalmann. Your line is open.
spk02: Just a quick follow-up on the CLO question. Any timetable when you can basically unwind this position? I know you guys have been holding on to it, but given your portfolio managers are selling, can we see a timeframe in terms of you exiting CLOs? Thanks.
spk08: Yes, I'd say in most of our positions we are not the majority holder, so we don't really have control over the exit. For ones that we do, which are a very small subset, we certainly look at that, Chris. But obviously, again, kind of where the market is right now, and again, putting aside the manager's behavior, we do think there is some far more temporal declines or unrealized losses in the syndicated market just from kind of mark-to-market and things like that. So I think our hope would be to kind of, you know, exit those in a more normalized environment. But for the most part, we don't actually have control over those within our CLOs. We're a relatively small percentage of the equity.
spk02: Okay.
spk04: Thanks for the clarification.
spk00: There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Goldthorpe, I turn the call back over to you.
spk07: Thank you very much, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. And we look forward to speaking to you again in early November when we'll be announcing our third quarter 2023 results. Thank you so much, and enjoy the end of your summer.
spk00: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer