Bain Capital Specialty Finance, Inc.

Please stand by. Your program is about to begin. If you require assistance throughout the event today, please press star zero. Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's Bain Capital Specialty Finance third quarter, ended September 30th, 2025, earnings conference 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. Please note, today's call will be recorded and I will be standing by should you need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Catherine Schneider with Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Chloe. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Bain Capital Specialty Finance third quarter ended September 30th, 2025 conference call. Yesterday, after market closed, we issued our earnings press release and investor presentation of our quarterly results, a copy of which is available on Bain Capital Specialty Finance's investor relations website. Following our remarks today, we will hold a question and answer session for analysts and investors. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available on our website. This call and the webcast are property of Bain Capital Specialty Finance and any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. Any forward-looking statements made today do not guarantee future performance and actual results may differ materially. These statements are based on current management expectations, which include risks and uncertainties, which are identified in the risk factor section of our Form 10-Q that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated. Bain Capital Specialty Finance assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements at this time unless required to do so by law. Lastly, past performance does not guarantee future results. So with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Michael Ewald.

Thanks, Catherine, and good morning, and thank you all for joining us on our earnings call here today. Before continuing with our regular programming, we do want to take a moment just to recognize anyone on the call who has served or is serving in our armed services. We genuinely appreciate your service and want to recognize you today on Veterans Day. Thanks. I'm joined today by Mike Boyle, our president, and our chief financial officer, Amit Joshi. As usual, in terms of the agenda for the call, I'll start with an overview of our third quarter results and then provide some thoughts on our performance, the current market environment, and our positioning. Thereafter, Mike and Amit will discuss our investment portfolio, and financial results in greater detail, and we'll leave some time for questions at the end. Yesterday, after market closed, we delivered another quarter of solid results for the third quarter ended September 30th. Q3 net investment income per share was $0.45, representing an annualized yield on book value of 10.3% and exceeding our regular quarterly dividend by 7%. Q3 earnings per share were 29 cents, reflecting an annualized return on book value of 6.6%. Our net asset value per share was $17.40, a decline of 16 cents per share from the prior quarter end. This modest decline in our NAV this quarter was primarily due to a markdown on one of our loans that was idiosyncratically driven and not reflective of any broader credit issues apparent across our broader portfolio. Subsequent to quarter end, our board declared a fourth quarter dividend equal to $0.42 per share and payable to record date holders as of December 16, 2025. The board also declared an additional dividend of $0.03 per share for shareholders of record as of December 16, 2025, as we previously announced in February. This brings total dividends for the fourth quarter to $0.45 per share, or a 10.3% annualized rate on ending book value as of September 30th. During the third quarter, we saw a new deal activity pick up across the middle market, driven by new LBO and M&A activity, following greater clarity on tariffs and stability regarding economic indicators such as inflation and unemployment, both of which have remained elevated in the U.S., but have not continued to accelerate. Against this backdrop, our private credit group continues to curate a strong pipeline of lending opportunities in the core middle market. Our depth of industry expertise and collaboration across Bain Capital's global platform enables us to identify attractive investment opportunities in more specialized industries. Furthermore, our sponsors continue to view us as true business partners and value our ability to provide flexible capital solutions that support the financing and growth needs of their portfolio companies. During Q3, BCSF's gross originations were $340 million. We remain disciplined on terms and structure in our segment of the market, with a weighted average spread on originations to new companies of approximately 550 basis points and weighted average leverage of 4.5 times. The vast majority of these commitments were to first lien borrowers. Now, to quickly address the credit market headlines in recent weeks, we do not have exposure to first brands nor tricolor. While these credit events have been broadly linked to the overall private credit market, they've occurred outside of the traditional direct lending segment. First Brands and Tricolor are large cap companies versus Bain Capital's private credit groups focus within the core metal market. We favor this segment of the market due to its attractive characteristics, including greater loan tranche control, reduced lender consensus risk, and the prevalence of covenanted structures that provide for stronger lender downside management. We believe the bankruptcies of First Brands and Tricolor are idiosyncratic and do not believe that they reflect broader stress in the private credit market. However, these recent credit events reinforce the importance of our rigorous investment due diligence process, which incorporates scrutiny of off-balance sheet liabilities, collateral integrity, and sources of liquidity and corporate governance. Our processes also include deploying third-party legal advisors to perform legal due diligence and seeking to ensure that our borrowers have reputable auditors and quality of earnings providers. Finally, we also negotiate strict documentation for our loans, which includes not just financial covenants, but also broad reporting and inspection rights, all of which ensure we stay well informed about our portfolio company's performance, trends, and asset quality. While these are not new elements of our investment process, these recent credit events further support our emphasis on robust due diligence on every transaction we underwrite. In fact, credit quality and fundamentals continue to be healthy across our portfolio. Investments on non-accrual represented just 1.5% and 0.7% at amortized cost and fair value, respectively, as of September 30th. Non-accruals were relatively stable from the prior quarter end. Turning to our outlook on earnings and dividend coverage in light of market expectations for a lower interest rate environment ahead, first, as a reminder, when we increased our regular dividend level throughout 2022 and 2023, We set our dividend policy at an attractive level for shareholders of between 9% and 10% and to a level that we believed could be earned throughout multiple market environments. Since then, we've been operating with meaningful net investment income dividend coverage, which has provided excess income that has been distributed to our shareholders via supplemental dividends and also increased retained earnings driving healthy spillover income equal to $1.46 per share or three times our regular dividend level. Our Q3 net investment income has come down relative to peak levels in prior periods, largely due to the decrease in base rates, but notably still exceeds our regular dividend level. In the current environment, we believe we can maintain our regular 42 cent per share dividend. The company has several earnings levers to potentially offset headwinds next year from a lower rate environment and our fixed rate debt maturity in 2026 beginning in March. These future growth levers include Higher earnings from select joint venture and ABL investments through the Senior Loan Program, SLP, and legacy corporate lending, as our current dividend payout from those structures has been lower relative to their run rate earnings potential. Second, higher levels of prepayment-related income and other income as new M&A deal volumes increase. And finally, leveraging our private credit group platform's focus in the core middle market to drive attractive spreads on new investments. We also selectively invest in junior debt investments as our flexible capital in today's market environment can be a valuable tool for middle market borrowers. Taking all of this together with a solid credit performance that we have demonstrated over the years, we believe the company is well positioned to continue driving attractive results for our shareholders. Furthermore, we believe our current stock price valuation offers a compelling opportunity relative to our credit fundamentals. At BCSS' current market price as of yesterday's close, Our dividend yield, inclusive of our regular and special dividend for Q4, represents a 13% annualized yield. We believe this is an attractive level for investors on both an absolute and relative value basis across the BDC sector. I will now turn the call over to Mike Boyle, our president, to walk through our investment portfolio in greater detail. Mike.