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spk00: Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's Q4 2023 SLR Investment Corp earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Please note, this call is being recorded. I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Chairman and Co-CEO, Michael Gross. Please go ahead.
spk08: Thank you very much and good morning. Welcome to SLR Investment Corp's earnings call for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2023. I'm joined here today by Bruce Buller, our Co-Chief Executive Officer, and our Chief Financial Officer, Shiraz Khaji. Shiraz, before we begin, would you please start by covering the webcast and forward-looking statements?
spk04: Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to remind everyone that today's call and webcasts are being recorded. Please note that they are the property of Estelar Investment Corp., and any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. This conference call is also being webcast for the events calendar in the investor section on our website at www.estelarinvestment.com. Audio replays of this call will be made available later today, as disclosed in our February 27th earnings press release. I would also like to call your attention to the customary disclosures in our press release regarding forward-looking statements. Today's conference call or webcast may include forward-looking statements and projection. These statements are not guarantees of our future performance or financial results and involve a double of risk and uncertainties. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Actual results may differ materially as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in our filings with the SEC. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements unless required to do so by law. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings, please visit our website or call us at 212-993-1670. At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to our Chairman and Co-CEO, Michael Gross.
spk08: Thank you, Shiraz. We are pleased to report that for the fourth quarter of 2023, SLRC generated net investment income of $0.44 per share, representing growth of 7% year-over-year, and a 26% increase over our net investment income immediately following our merger with SLR Senior Corps Q1 2022. Our fourth quarter NII per share equates to a 7% surplus over our distributions paid during the quarter. The increase of NII over the past two years has been driven by meaningful, comprehensive portfolio growth, as well as increases in reference rates and asset yields. We believe this will be an attractive vintage to have grown our portfolio. Also contributing to our strong quarter, SLRC earned $1.1 million from SLR Senior Lending Program, or SSLP as we call it, represented a 10.2% annualized yield compared to earnings of $300,000 in Q3. At year end, investment commitments totaled $200 million, and we expect commitments to reach approximately $240 to $250 million by the end of Q1. Once fully ramped, based on current rates, we anticipate that this vehicle will generate an annualized yield in the low double digits. At December 31st, our net asset value per share was $18.09, up from $18.06 per share at September 30th, reflecting stable credit performance and the over-earning of our distribution. We continue to be pleased with the credit quality of our portfolio, with no new no new non-accruals during the quarter. Our December 31st non-accrual rate was just 0.6% and 0.4% on fair value, which remains significantly below the BDC industry average. In finance, the average EBITDA and revenue growth continues to be positive for our portfolio companies. Overall, they have successfully managed the transition to an environment with higher cost of capital and inflation. The weighted average interest coverage on our sponsor finance loans is 1.0 times. We believe these healthy metrics are the result of our focus in sponsor finance on recession-resilient industries with high recurring free cash flow, such as health care and business services. As a reminder, our comprehensive portfolio achieves significant diversification for our specialty finance investments, allowing us to be highly selective in sponsor finance. Our specialty finance allocations provide the portfolio with counter-cyclical, and less correlated investment opportunities to cash flow credit. Credit quality for specialty finance investments continues to be solid with attractive LTVs that have meaningful collateral support. At quarter end, approximately 98% of our comprehensive investment portfolio is comprised of first lien senior secured loans. Our longstanding focus on first lien loans has resulted in a portfolio which we believe is better equipped to withstand persistent inflationary pressures and high interest rates and portfolios with second lien loans. Additionally, with approximately 76% of our comprehensive investment portfolio invested in specialty finance assets, we have borrowing bases and covenant structures which we believe are defensively positioned. In 2023, SLRC had record originations of approximately $1.5 billion. Their sponsored finance business in particular capitalizing on an investment environment with better pricing and lower risk profiles than the historical average. Repayments for the year totaled over $1.3 billion, representing approximately 45% of our beginning 2023 portfolio. Although LBO volume was down in 2023, approximately 61% of sponsor finance investments supported tuck-in acquisitions for new and existing portfolio companies, with remaining activity financing new LBO investment opportunities. Buyers and sellers continue to engage in price discovery, with increased pressure on sponsors to transact as LPs seek a return of capital before making new commitments. As a result of the slow M&A environment, sponsors have held on to their performance for longer via maturity extensions and sales to continuation vehicles. While M&A activities remain muted thus far in 2024 and competition has increased for this limited direct lending deal flow, we remain excited about the opportunities set for direct lending in 2024 from an expected acceleration in M&A activity in the second half of the year. Our life science, ABA, and equipment finance strategies continue to benefit from being uncorrelated to the broader cash flow market. The life science market continues to recover from lighter activity in 2023. Equity valuations for both private and public life science companies have been stabilized with debt opportunities continuing to improve. The ABL market remains robust, with referrals from both money center banks and regional banks accelerating. In particular, the continued turbulence of regional banks is providing more opportunities for private credit managers such as ourselves. Firms with significant available capital, such as the SLR platform, are able to fill the void left as regional banks retreat. Borrowers value our speed and certainty of execution, flexibility, and our ability to invest $150 to $200 million in a given upper middle market financing, which gives us influence over pricing and documentation. With $13 billion of total investable capital across the platform, inclusive of anticipated leverage, SLR has a scale to provide full financing solutions, which benefits SLR's city co-investment. Importantly, we have ample dry powder to capitalize on the favorable investment environment. At December 31st, including available credit facility capacity at the SSLP and especially finance portfolio companies, SLRC had over half a billion dollars of available capital to take advantage of the current attractive investment environment. I'll now turn over the call back to Shiraz to take you through the Q4 financial highlights.
spk04: Thank you, Michael. SLR Investment Corp's net asset value at December 31, 2023 was $987 million, or $18.09 per share, compared to $985 million, or $18.06 per share, at September 30. At quarter end, SLRC's unbalanced sheet investment portfolio had a value of approximately $2.2 billion in 151 portfolio companies across 43 industries, compared to a fair market value of $2.2 billion in 154 portfolio companies across 43 industries at September 30. Also, at December 31, SSLP had a fair value portfolio of $187 million, firstly in senior secured loans. Of the initial $100 million joint commitment, SLRC and our JV partner have contributed combined equity in the amount of $85 million. In Q4 2023, SLRC earned income of $1.1 million from SSLP, equating to a 10.2% annualized yield. In the fourth quarter, we also upsized the SSLP credit facility by $50 million to $150 million. On December 31st, SLRC had approximately $1.2 billion of debt outstanding, with leverage of 1.19 times net debt to equity, up from the pandemic low of 0.57 times. We expect our leverage ratio to remain in the middle of our target leverage range of 0.9 to 1.25 times. SLRC's funding profile is in a strong position to continue to weather the current interest rate environment. Just this month, we expanded the list of participants in our primary credit facility. Furthermore, our existing $470 million of senior unsecured fixed rate notes have a weighted average annual interest rate of only 3.8%, and we expect to opportunistically access the investment-grade debt market. Moving to the P&L, for the three months ended December 31st, Gross investment income totaled $59.8 million, versus $59.6 million for the three months ended September 30th. Net expenses totaled $35.9 million for the three months ended December 31st. This compares to $36.3 million for the prior quarter. As a reminder, at the time of the merger of SLR Senior Investment Corp., or SONS, into the company last year, the investment advisor agreed to waive incentive fees resulting from income due to the accretion of purchase discount allocated to investments acquired as part of the merger. During the fourth quarter, the company waived approximately $90,000 of incentive fees related to the merger, which now totals approximately $2 million in cumulative waivers by the manager related to the merger. Accordingly, the company's net investment income for the three months ended December 31, 2023 totaled $23.9 million, or $0.44 for average share, compared to $23.4 million, or $0.40 for average share, for the three months ended September 30th. Below the line, the company had a net realized and unrealized loss for the fourth quarter, totaling $0.3 million, versus a net realized and unrealized gain of $3.6 million for the third quarter of 2023. As a result, the company had a net increase in net assets resulting from operations of $23.6 million for the three months ended December 31st, 2023, compared increase of $26.9 million for the three months ended September 30th. Mentioned on previous calls, The company has returned to making quarterly rather than monthly distributions, and on February 27, the Board of SLRC declared a Q1 2024 quarterly distribution of $0.41 per share, payable on March 28, 2024, to holders of record as of March 14, 2024. With that, I'll turn the call over to our co-CEO, Bruce Fuller.
spk03: Thank you, Shiraz. Before I provide an overview of our portfolio, I'd like to touch on our approach to portfolio construction. Our commercial finance business model provides us with the flexibility and capabilities to capitalize on the most attractive lending opportunities across our four private credit investment strategies. We take a fundamental bottom-up approach to portfolio construction based on the relative attractiveness or risk-adjusted returns across our investment verticals. While we were a more active sponsor of finance throughout 2023, we did see a pickup in activity in our other verticals during the fourth quarter, which we expect to continue in 2024. With our flexible mandate and broad capabilities, we are positioned to take advantage of either continued durable economic conditions or softening of the economy. We believe having the flexibility to play either offense or defense at the right moments across the cycle is critical to long-term consistent performance. Now let me turn to the portfolio. At year end, on a fair value basis, the comprehensive portfolio consisted of approximately 3.1 billion of senior secured loans to 790 borrowers across over 110 industries, with a 3.9 million or 0.1 percent position exposure. Measured at fair value, 99.2% of our portfolio consisted of senior secured loans, with 97.7% invested in first lien loans, including investments through our SSLP attributable to the company. And only 0.3% was invested in second lien cash flow loans, with the remaining 1.2% of the portfolio invested in second lien asset-based loans with full borrowing basis. Our specialty finance investments account for approximately 76% of the comprehensive portfolio, with the remaining 24% invested in senior secured cash flow loans to upper mid-market, private equity-owned companies. We believe that this defensive portfolio composition positions us well for potential economic weakness and provides a differentiated risk-return profile for our shareholders compared to sponsor-only portfolios. At quarter end, our weighted average asset level yield was 11.6%. Our credit quality remains strong. At year end, the weighted average investment risk rating of our portfolio was under two, based on our one to four risk rating scale, with one representing the least amount of risk. Over 97% of the portfolio is rated a two or higher, and 99.4% of the portfolio on a cost basis was performing. with only one in a non-accrual. Now let me turn to our four investment verticals. In our sponsored finance business, we originate first lien senior secured loans to upper mid-market companies in non-cyclical industries such as healthcare services, business services, and financial services, which we believe has helped to mitigate the impact on our portfolio from cyclical economic factors. At year end, this portfolio was approximately $730 million, including the senior secured loans in the SSLP attributable to our company. We were invested across 50 distinct borrowers. With approximately 99% of the cash flow portfolio in first lien loans, we believe that these investments are well positioned to withstand liquidity pressures that borrowers may be facing in light of higher interest rates. Additionally, we believe we have a defensively positioned portfolio. Our borrowers have a weighted average EBITDA of only $120 million, low LTVs of approximately 40%, and interest coverage ratios averaging 1.7 times. Our portfolio is comprised of businesses that perform essential services with either recurring or reoccurring revenues and generally have low capital intensity. Overall, our portfolio has exhibited solid credit metrics that have remained steady 2023. During the quarter, we originated $107 million of cash flow loans and experienced repayments of $185 million. Our fourth quarter investments, all of which were first lien, have an average yield to expected maturity of 12.6%, an average leverage to our investment of 4.8 times, with interest coverage of 1.7 times. We believe these metrics support our thesis that 2023 should be a great vintage for sponsor finance investments. Importantly, this portfolio carries less leverage than the historical average for new issues. Michael mentioned sponsor finance deal flow continues to be muted due to lower M&A volume. However, there are pockets, particularly in our defensive sectors, where we do see opportunities to make loans at attractive risk-adjusted returns. At quarter end, the weighted average yield across the portfolio was 12%. Now let me turn to our ABL segment. In the wake of the U.S. regional banking crisis last year, the opportunity set for all of our ABL businesses improved. As lending standards tightened at commercial banks, we saw an increase in deal flow. As a result, we were able to originate several new attractive investments. As new entrants with less experience have entered the space, we remain committed to our high underwriting standards in which we focus on the quality of the underlying collateral base when determining acceptable advance rates and loan-to-value ratios. We believe that not adhering to this discipline may result in losses in the ABL asset class. Increase in deal volume is enabling us to remain active while being extremely selective. At year end, the senior secured ABL portfolio totaled just under $1 billion, representing 31.5% of our comprehensive portfolio, and it was invested across 160 borrowers. Weighted average asset level yield was 14.5%, and the average LTV was approximately 60%. For the fourth quarter, we had $150 million of new ABL investments and repayments of $166 million. Now let me touch on equipment finance. At year end, this portfolio totaled $1 billion, representing 32% of our comprehensive portfolio, and was highly diversified across 550 borrowers. Credit profile continues to be strong. The weighted average asset level yield was just over 8%. During the fourth quarter, we originated approximately $154 million of new equipment loans and had repayments of $106 million. Our investment pipeline has expanded in conjunction with the disruption caused by the regional bank failures. Finally, let me touch on life sciences. At year end, our portfolio is $360 million at fair value. Approximately 80 percent of the portfolio at par is invested in loans to borrowers that have over 12 months of cash runway. Additionally, all of our portfolio companies are generating revenues with at least one product in the commercialization stage, which significantly de-risks our investment exposure. Life science loans represented 11.6% of our portfolio at year end and contributed just under 22% of our gross income for the quarter. During the fourth quarter, the team committed to 16 million of new investments and funded 38 million of new investments, while having repayments of 6 million. We have just under 20 million of unfunded life science commitments, which may be drawn by borrowers based upon reaching important milestones, such as revenue levels or liquidity levels. At year end, the weighted average yield on this portfolio was 13%. This excludes any success fees or warrants. While we expect valuations in the life science segment to stabilize this year, we continue to see several new lending opportunities that will meet our underwriting criteria. Given our ability to allocate our capital to the best risk-reward opportunities, we have the luxury of being highly selective in our capital deployment in life sciences. while yet still generating positive originations and portfolio growth for the company overall. Now let me turn the call back to Michael.
spk08: Thank you, Bruce. In conclusion, our portfolio reflects stable fundamentals and benefits, and benefits from the flexibility to allocate capital to investments across our different lending verticals that we believe offer the most attractive risk-adjusted returns for our shareholders. Based on last night's closing price, SLRC trades at an 11% yield, which we believe presents an attractive investment opportunity. We have available capital and an opportunity for continued earnings growth. While the current market expectations are for rates to stay higher for longer, it's important to remember that specialty finance spreads and returns are not as volatile as cash flow onto finance investments. As a result, we would not expect yield contraction for specialty finance assets to the same extent as sponsored finance when interest rates begin to move lower. Looking forward, we expect origination opportunities to be driven by a combination of increased activity, loan maturities, and regulatory credit contraction forces impacting regional banks to the benefit of direct lenders such as ourselves. In addition, we continue to seek opportunities to expand our specialty finance capabilities through token acquisitions for existing commercial finance portfolio companies portfolio team acquisitions, or acquisitions of specialty finance portfolios. SLRC's broad foundation of diversified commercial finance businesses has the resources and experience to acquire portfolios and to service the loans on an opportunistic basis. We continue to believe that a diversified portfolio approach across sponsor and commercial finance assets is the most effective strategy to generate income and manage risk across economic cycles. In closing, our investment advisors' alignment of interest with the company's shareholders can be one of our guiding principles. The SLR team owns over 8% of the company's stock, including a significant percentage of their annual incentive compensation invested in the SLRC stock. The team's investment alongside fellow shareholders demonstrates our confidence in the company's defensive portfolio, stable funding, and favorable position. We appreciate your time today. Operator, will you please open up the line for questions?
spk00: At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star 2. Once again, that is star 1 to ask a question. We will pause for a moment to allow questions to queue. Our first question comes from Mickey Shlian with Ladenburg.
spk01: Yes, good morning, Bruce and Michael. I want to start off by asking you about other income reported for the quarter. Could you give us a sense of what underlies that amount, which was relatively high in comparison to your previous quarters?
spk04: I think the major driver there, we had a chunky exit fee in our life science business this quarter. Those fees, you know, sporadic throughout the year. And so that was the major driver in Q4 versus the prior quarter.
spk03: And as you know, Mickey, sometimes we will get the exit fee as a success fee or warrant that comes in a detachable form subsequent to repayment. So this was actually a life science loan that paid off earlier in the year and but then hit a milestone that triggered a success fee for us in the fourth quarter.
spk01: Very nice. Congratulations on that. I wanted to also ask about the sponsored finance cash flow segment. I see that that portfolio shrank during the quarter. Can you give me a sense of to what extent the normalization of the broadly syndicated loan market and potential prepayment activity in sponsored finance drove that contraction?
spk03: Great question. More broadly, as you see across the year, there was growth. I don't want to focus too much on one quarter, but I do think it brings up a bigger issue, which is we are beginning to see some pressure where a lot of capital, as you know, has been raised in the cash flow market. It starts at the upper, upper market, kind of above where we play. I'll call it the, you know, four or 500 million EBITDA business competing with the broadly syndicated loan business where you start to see a fair amount of capital come in and start to put pressure in terms of borrowers asking for repricings to take their cost of capital down. It's creeping a little bit into where we are playing in the, you know, call it 100 to 200 million EBITDA businesses, and we are opportunistically using that as a chance to exit because, again, we have seen very attractive opportunities to deploy. You know, you see the originations are still strong, but we also have opportunities, as you know, in our other verticals where we will recycle capital at higher returns. So it's not so much a lot of sales across portfolio companies, but it's more, you know, pricings where certain lenders are opting to stay and we're opting to exit. And I think that trend will continue as we've seen in the early part of 2024.
spk08: But I think importantly, because less than a quarter of our portfolio is in kind of that sector, the The other 75% of our business, and especially finance, are not really driven by the technical factors of the financing markets. To your point, Mickey, as capital returns into the liquid market, I think in general finance, portfolios are at risk of being repriced or letting them go, whereas that's just not the case in specialty finance. You don't have the ebbs and flows of capital into the space that drives pricing and returns.
spk01: I understand that that's helpful. My last question relates to your internal investment ratings. I see there was both migration up to ones, but there was also migration down to level three and four. Any color you can provide on the downward migration?
spk03: Yeah, I don't think there was much movement on four. There was a movement into three, and that was one investment. And what I would say, Mickey, is we are fortunate that our watch list is made up of names that are fundamentally performing and strong operations in terms of revenue and EBITDA growth, but maybe are facing some capital structure constraints. And so, we'll move it into a watch list until we resolve the capital structure. But that was literally just one specific name. I think, you know, if we were to rate it today rather than at 1231, it probably would not be on watch list, which I hope will be the case going forward. But we're comforted that our fundamentals are strong, and we're just addressing some balance sheet issues here and there.
spk01: Okay. That's helpful. That's it for me this morning. Thank you.
spk02: Thank you. Thank you, Mickey.
spk00: The next question comes from Eric Zwick with Hovde Group.
spk07: Good morning, Eric. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to start first. We've got $125 million of notes maturing later this year in December. I'm just curious about your thoughts for, you know, the source of funding to redeem those. And, Shiraz, maybe you kind of alluded to that in some of your comments, you know, indicating that you might opportunistically, you know, kind of tap the investment grade market. But, yeah, I'm just kind of curious your thoughts on funding the redemption of those notes.
spk03: Yeah, so, as you know, that's our first redemption in quite some time. You know, very, you know, fortunate to have some good luck that we haven't had to go to the market during this rising rate environment of the last couple of years. We have, as Shiraz mentioned, increased our lender universe. So we have capital such that we don't need to refinance this in the unsecured market in December when the maturity comes up. But we are going to be opportunistic throughout this year to look to turn that out.
spk08: And I think importantly, given the size of that maturity It allows us to really pursue multiple options, be nimble, and see what the best opportunity is. We've had a very strong following in the insurance company private marketplace, and we've had a lot of success doing kind of bespoke financing at the right time.
spk02: So we feel very comfortable about the situation. Yeah, I mean, we've had a lot of inbound inquiries.
spk03: You know, there's been a fair amount of activity in the IG market year to date. So for us, it's a matter of when, not if.
spk07: That's helpful. Thank you. And then you previously, you know, mentioned that leverage would decline as the SLP ramps, and that has been the case over the past two quarters. The leverage has come down, and I think that you've still got room to, you know, increase SLP even more. So should we continue to expect leverage to come down, you know, closer to the middle of the range over the next few quarters?
spk03: Yeah, I think it will, you know, as Shiraz mentioned, it'll move between the 1.1 and the 1.2. What we are doing, as you know, is moving, which we are substantially complete with moving lower yielding assets that we acquired with the merger with Sons back in 22 into the SSLP, which frees up balance sheet at the parent company to invest in some of these very attractive vintage across our four strategies. But, you know, we're comfortable given the vintage and the quality of the assets to operate between the 1.1 and the 1.2 at this stage of the cycle.
spk07: And then last one for me, you spent a fair amount of time in the prepared remarks talking about the opportunities that have been created in multiple of your kind of lending platforms from the turbulence in the regional bank market. I know this is a little bit hard to kind of maybe answer or have a strong opinion about, but just curious, you know, what type of sightline you have and how long does that opportunity last at this point?
spk03: I guess it's, we don't, Put it this way, at the moment, we think it's going to continue to operate, exist throughout this year. I don't really, based on our conversations, we're not hearing a lot of dialogue from banks looking to come back in. It's more about shedding portfolios and teams. And so it will really, we think, be a great opportunity for direct lenders, private credit providers such as SLR to step in there if you have these capabilities. And very often it's a portfolio, so you really need to have the team to be able to acquire that portfolio, underwrite the portfolio, and manage that portfolio. So these are not always standalone businesses. They're assets for sale, and we think those are very attractive opportunities. But I will say, in the past, when we have lost individual investments across some of our specialty finance businesses, including life sciences, where the SBB was a dominant player, it was typically by several hundred basis points to a regional bank. And so we're just feeling that the lack of that competition is also helping us in our day-to-day business.
spk07: Thanks for taking my questions today.
spk03: Thank you.
spk00: The next question comes from Bryce Rowe with B. Reilly. Thanks. Good morning.
spk02: Good morning. Good morning.
spk05: Wanted to maybe follow up on some of Eric's questioning there around, you know, the environment that is providing some opportunities within the banking space. Maybe, Bruce, can you talk a little bit about, you know, how widespread the, you know, maybe the pullback is within that space? And then, you know, from a geographic perspective, how well suited, you know, the SLR platform is to to take advantage? I mean, is it pockets of the country or pockets of the regional bank space, or is it more widespread than that?
spk03: That is a great question, because to your point, it is a very regional business. We think that provides the opportunity and, to some extent, a barrier for other entrants. Some of these lines of business are very difficult to grow organically other than on the margin, and having the opportunity to step into Nugent's Because you do need feet on the street, as you know, we have 19 offices around the country. Most of them are dedicated to our specialty finance businesses, both sourcing teams as well as underwriting teams, as well as management teams. I think what many people don't appreciate is that these are asset management heavy of the loans. Once you make the loan, you're monitoring the collateral so that you're comfortable advancing against that collateral throughout your loan investment. And so you need a big investment in people, and it, to your point, does need to be regional. And so we are not seeing the dislocation in any specific region, but thankfully for us, we are finding opportunities in regions we don't cover or industries we don't cover. There are industry-dedicated platforms that may just do factoring for the trucking sector. There are Canada-based companies. Midwest-based companies, we have a nice presence in Minneapolis and Salt Lake City, on the East Coast and the Southeast, but there are definitely pockets where we would like to have more penetration. And so this location feels to be widespread, and I think that we're in the early days of participants making decisions about whether they want to exit, whether they want to JV. We've had approaches to JV with people who want to still have attachment and touch points with those customers, with those corporate borrowers, but they don't want to tie up their balance sheets. So they'd like to partner with somebody like an SLR where we take on the assets and they maintain the relationship, the cash management, and many of the treasury and fee-based businesses that are so lucrative for the banks. So the banks are taking a very strategic approach, and it varies across areas. individual institutions rather than regions, but we're open to all regions in the states.
spk05: That's great, Collar. Appreciate it. Let's see, maybe just shifting gears a little bit. Yeah, there's a lot of talk about which way rates are going to move and when. Wanted to get a sense for, you know, your portfolio or your balance sheet's asset sensitivity to lower rates and How should we be thinking about different rate scenarios over the next quarter or two? Thanks.
spk03: I'll kick it off for a second. To some extent, we benefit with rates staying elevated because we do have very defensive portfolio. And as Michael mentioned, only 24% of it exposed to cash flow lending rather than more asset-oriented strategies where you do have more cushion during higher rate environments and more control over the investment because you have not only covenants but borrowing bases. So, selfishly speaking, we do benefit by having elevated rates longer. I think it also keeps more competitors on the sidelines as they deal with some stress in portfolios that people are starting to see just in terms of covering this debt service, you know, on top of having inflationary pressures across their operating performance. So to some extent we benefit, but as Michael touched on, we also benefit, we think, in a declining rate environment just because many of these asset classes are more absolute return products that are less sensitive to both increase and decrease in interest rates. So we feel like the stability of our earnings is better than it would be had we just been a 100% cash flow portfolio.
spk08: We also have a chunk of our portfolio in the equipment leasing sector that is fixed rate. So we're putting on assets at higher yields today, and, you know, those won't go down when rates go down.
spk05: That's great. Thank you.
spk00: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1. Our next question comes from Robert Dodd with Raymond James.
spk06: Hi, guys. Congratulations on the quarter. A couple of questions. On the cash flow lending book, as you said, repricing is starting to creep in. A lot of your cash flow book as it stands today was a 2023 vintage, which slightly higher spreads, lower leverage, really attractive vintage. But what's What risk do you consider that those assets, are they going to be sticky? Or are those at better leverage, better spend? Are those the ones that are going to get refinanced relatively quickly if the market activity more broadly accelerates this year?
spk03: So I would say that there is a component of our cash flow book, Robert, that is extremely acquisitive. in financial services, in healthcare. And those sponsors are very focused in this environment on making additional tuck-in acquisitions. I think if they were done with their acquisition program, they might turn to optimizing the pricing of the financing. But right now, they're more focused on availability of financing. They may have a billion-dollar credit facility and need another $200 million to make an add-on acquisition. And so they're coming to people like us who can take down that $200 million add-on and less focused on saving the 25 basis points. But I think as that portfolio matures and the sponsors are getting ready to exit the portfolio company, then you might see them turn more towards repricing. So I don't think it's going to be a major headwind for us just because the businesses are still in growth mode. But once you get into more of a harvesting mode, they will be back around looking to reprice, no doubt about it.
spk08: The other factor that's relevant also is that the biggest source of repricing today is investment banks being back in the syndicated loan market and being able to distribute those loans. The average EBITDA of our portfolio is 122. Those aren't, on average, the bigger ones aren't, but those are not candidates for refinancing in the BSL market. So I think The people who are truly at risk for immediate repricing are, you know, average EBITDA of $300 million, where, you know, a billion, two billion, five, four to five times financing is extremely doable in today's public market. The public markets never really did the $120 million EBITDA company. So I think the risk of the repricing of our portfolio is far less than those in the bigger credits.
spk02: Yeah, to Mike's point, the one or two names –
spk03: that have come in and asked in the last week or so are larger 300 million EBITDA type names.
spk06: Got it. Got it. Thank you. Very clear. On the other question, I mean, on the comprehensive portfolio, ABL is about a third, equipment financing is about a third. To your point, right, there's opportunities for maybe acquisitions, JVs on the asset-based side, maybe acquisitions on the fragmented equipment financing side. I mean, where are you comfortable in the mix? I mean, would you be comfortable with having equipment financing at 50% of the comprehensive portfolio? I mean, do you like diversification by the specially financed vertical? So where would you be comfortable?
spk03: Yeah, and look, the equipment finance portfolio is one of the most diverse portfolios across the platform. So to your point, that is comforting. But I think that we've always said when, you know, we've been blessed that we haven't had to work with a finite capital pool base. We've always seemed to get repays at the time that we see a nice investment opportunity across different verticals. But we've always felt that at 15%, 16% life sciences and with zero losses in the team's history. It's a pretty compelling asset class, but it's not unlimited in terms of its need for capital. So we try to take advantage of life science as much as possible. I think asset-based lending, where you're lending against working capital assets, receivables, and inventory, is another segment that is incredibly scalable, to your point, similar to equipment finance, and obviously we have, you know, the investment across three different ABL teams here. So we think we're well positioned there. So I think, you know, the short answer is, as you know with us, sponsor finance will ebb and flow between, you know, 15% and 30% based on where we see the market opportunity. But I think asset-based lending and life sciences, we'd like to scale up as well as equipment. But I think we see in the near term a little bit more growth in ABL and hopefully life sciences, equipment finance, to Michael's point, because it is a fixed-rate asset. We need rates to come down a little bit more, but we are positioned for growth as we look out at 24, having just sat down with the team and gone through the business plan there. There are some strategies where we're going to take that up, but I think it might be even more accelerated growth on the ABL side. Got it.
spk06: Thank you.
spk00: It appears we have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the program back over to Michael Gross for any additional or closing remarks.
spk08: Thank you all for your time this morning. No additional closing remarks, but as always, we are here and available if anybody has any follow-up questions. Thank you.
spk00: This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.
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